


It's Called Life

by luverofralts



Category: Invader Zim
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-08
Updated: 2015-11-08
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5165909
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luverofralts/pseuds/luverofralts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Repost from ff.net from 2004</p><p>A philosophical look at Dib's life. Based loosely on the Halloween episode, Dib falls into a coma and in order to escape, he must confront his own demons.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

* * *

True, I talk of dreams  
Which are the children of an idle brain  
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy;  
Which is as thin of substance as the air  
-Mercutio, Romeo and Juliet

* * *

It was a fairly normal day at the local elementary skool...which wasn't saying much. Perhaps, when presented with the low quality of education and the rate students were shipped to the crazy house for their respective gender, it would be better to say that it was quiet day. Yes, quiet. It was something the educators at this skool rarely experienced and it was something they were incredibly grateful for.

The main reason for any disturbance lay in Ms. Bitters' classroom in the bitter rivalry of two of her students. Each day, the two children would fight and bicker and destroy, all in a futile effort to prove who was superior. Each of the boys had a file in the skool system that was so large that they had to be stored in two separate file cabinets. They were a menace to the mindless sort of education the skool offered with their "ideas" and "questions" about the way things in the world worked.

The administration had long thought about expelling them, but decided that since one of them was the son of the prominent scientist, Professor Membrane, they couldn't afford to upset such a global figure and risk losing the funding they received from him and his prolific organization. No, the insanity of the large headed son of the great scientist and his rival had to be tolerated; it was for the greater good in the end.

Since this rivalry was the primary cause for all skool disturbances, it wasn't odd that the temporary dissolution of the rivalry was the source of the peace that had descended upon the skool that morning. Membrane's son had neglected to show up for skool that morning, leaving the green child, Zim, alone to sit peaceably in class. The skool had tried separating the two into different classes before, but Dib had protested this change, claiming that Zim had to be watched at all times. Membrane had backed his son up, claiming that his son needed the socialization that the green child provided and the change in classrooms had been remedied immediately. The only hope for peace the skool had was for chance days like these, where one of the rivals didn't show up to skool, leaving their classmates undistracted from their mind crushing lectures on doom.

This morning, Ms. Bitters' classroom was eerily silent as their shadowy nightmare teacher roamed the classroom, looking for her next victim. Her gaze settled on a particularly bored looking student who was sitting at his desk staring idly at the clock.

"Zim!"

"Heh?"

Irken Invader Zim looked up at the shadowy figure of his teacher nonchalantly. Ms. Bitters emitted a low growl, but it did nothing to upset the Invader. He had seen far worse in his lifetime.

"Today is show and tell," she hissed. "Do you have your show and tell ready for presentation, or are you going to take your chances in...the box?"

At her mention, the hideous throbbing Box of Not Completedness that lurked in the corner of the classroom released a frightening hiss of green colored steam into the classroom. All the other children cringed at the sight of the box designed to encourage them to complete assignments, a few of them in the path of the released steam even fell over, rubbing their eyes in horrible pain.

The box struck fear into the hearts of his classmates, however it did not frighten Invader Zim. Pitiful Earth devices of control. How inferior.

"I would present my...presentation," he replied innocently, giving his teacher a cherubic look. Ms. Bitters glowered, as such innocence, even Zim's feigned innocence, brought her physical pain. "However, my show and tell is late and therefore I cannot present."

"Late? You filthy children and your hideous lies," the authority figure seethed, causing a few children near Zim to duck behind their desks. "Now get up there and present anyway! Or else!"

Zim shrugged and leaped from his desk and strode confidently to the front of the room, clutching something he took from within his desk carefully. He surveyed his classmates, who were either hiding behind their desks in terror, or doodling happy little child doodles in their notebooks.

"Filthy Earth-Friends," he began, with all the confidence and energy of a professional speaker, "I come before you with my offerings for this horrible...'Show and Tell.' So normal am I, and amazing that I chose to dazzle your inferior eye organs with this!" He held out a picture frame proudly. "That's me and my dog GIR. Normal human worm children have pets, and so do I...I am NORMAL!"

He looked around him at the class of bored children who didn't seem to be interested in his offering in the slightest.

"He was supposed to come to class today," Zim revealed. "I guess he got lost or something...that HORRIBLE robot...er...dog!"

A hand rose in the back of the classroom and a small voice interrupted Zim's presentation.

"I'm allergic to animals!" it announced, causing Zim to shake with indignant rage.

"Silence! You dare contradict ME? Your future ruler…ah…ruler…using…friend?"

The stupidity of Zim's save was soon ignored by a fiery blast erupting from the hallway.

"Cheese! I lurve it good!"

"AHHH!!!!"

The door slammed open to reveal the Dib, Zim's greatest and only threat to his mission, out of breath and panting. He looked behind him in fear, his eyes searching the class wildly.

"Dib! You're late!" Ms. Bitters' screech went unnoticed as a tiny green object whirled itself into the room, knocking over her desk in the process.

"GIR!"

Dib brushed himself off, noting that his precious trench coat had gotten dirty from the explosion in the hallway. There were metallic shaped bite marks on his collar, probably where GIR had attacked him.

"Sorry, Ms. Bitters," he apologized, glaring at Zim, who was desperately trying to get the little green dog to stop whipping pens into the air. "I didn't mean to be late, but Zim's robot dog thingy attacked me on my way to class." He glowered at Zim evilly. "It was probably just another one of Zim's plan to destroy humanity."

Zim quit waving furiously at GIR to momentarily glower at Dib.

"I've had enough of your constant slander, Dib-beast," he hissed, watching as GIR consumed a leg off a nearby desk, causing it to collapse on the unlucky child sitting behind it. "I can't do anything right in your hideous eyes. All of my ENORMOUS efforts to fit into this skool are always ruined by your stupid big head."

"My head's not big!" Dib shouted, pointing wildly at Zim. "Your efforts to fit in are stupid! I don't even need to "ruin" your plans; you ruin them yourself! When's the last time you ate the cafeteria food? Huh? Huh?"  
  
"I'm allergic," Zim replied sadly, looking at the floor, gaining the pity of his classmates.

"You can't just make fun of a person because they have a disability, Dib," a voice called out from near the back.

"Yeah just because he has a skin condition-"

"And no ears-"

"And pink eye-"

Dib glared at the now gloating alien before him as his gullible classmates rambled off excuses Zim had fed them for his weirdness. The next thing he knew, Zim would be feeding them some kind of lie about GIR, which they would without a doubt accept.

"I apologize for my dog's...idiocy," Zim announced. "My parents couldn't afford to send him to obedience skool. We had to sell our only window just to buy special food so that I could eat. 'Cause of my allergies. The ones that prevent me from eating that HORRIBLE filth you serve here. Yep."

Dib watched in horror as his prediction came true before his very eyes. Each of his classmates nodded their heads in sympathy, not once thinking about the absurdity of selling a window for food.

"Come on!" he pleaded with the twenty or so zombie creatures he called classmates. "You can't be serious! There's no way that-"

He was cut off with a particularly nasty sounding snarl from his teacher.

"Quiet Dib," she sneered. "As much as I enjoy hearing about the misfortune of my students, I can't allow any mocking to take place because of new skool board standards. So sit down and be grateful that your family can afford food." She turned back to Zim who was beaming proudly, trying his best to ignore the little green dog that was swinging from the projection screen.

"Zim! Sit down! Your presentation was horrible! I'd dock you marks for wasting precious minutes of my time, but since you live in such poverty, I'll extract my vengeance by stealing from your own life."

"You're a vampiric soul demon?" Dib questioned, looking at his teacher oddly. For a moment, Zim actually looked impressed, probably scheming hideous evil by exploiting his teacher's demonic nature.

If Bitters' eyes were capable of normal human movement, they would have twitched considerably.

"I was talking about detention," she growled. "A week for you Zim, and Dib, a month for your endless babbling."

"Hahahaha," laughed the short little alien. "Stupid, hideous Dib. Looks like your plan backfired, didn't it? Who's the superior being now?"

Dib sat at his desk grumpily.

"Your dog's eating the only globe our skool can afford," he pointed out, catching Ms. Bitters' wrath once more.

"Zim! Take your dog outside and have it shot," she ordered, sitting in his desk. "Since your dog ate my desk, I'm taking yours. You can learn out in the hallway until a suitable desk can be found."

"Ha, looks like the superior being can't even get a desk of his own," Dib sneered delightfully, sitting up in his own desk proudly.

"Oh you may have won this time, Dib," Zim growled, holding his SIR unit upside down by his little doggy tail. "Next time, next time I'll-"

"Cease your babbling!" the shadowy teacher ordered, slamming Zim's desk with the awesome force of her built up anger. "Dib! It's your turn to present to the class!"

"My turn?" the boy repeated in protest. "But I just got here!"

"All the more reason to go next," she replied with an evil grin. "Or perhaps you'd like to face the box?"

With a quick glance at the throbbing box in the corner, Dib shuddered and stood up quickly. He made his way to the front of the class room, only to be bothered by the irritating whispers of those around him.

"Oh here it comes, another speech about Bigfoot."

"Or Zim. Man, does he even realize how stupid he sounds?"

"He's crazy."

Dib cleared his throat as he looked sternly at the apathetic crowd. The pointed scythe on his head dipped as he moved, causing more than one person to giggle.

"Now I know what you're thinking," he began, looking at each face for some sympathy. He found none. Oh how he hated this skool. "I'm not here to talk about Bigfoot, or the chupacabra I saw in my dad's garden last week, or even Zim. I know how pointless that all is. For the record though, I _would_ like to point out that Zim is a horrible alien monster bent on enslaving us all to his will." There was an eerie silence as Dib paused, hoping to gather some support. Dead silence met him in return. He sighed hopelessly, and as he let down his guard, a paper ball of hatred filled doom collided with his giant head.

"Anyway, since you're all horrible people who refuse to listen to a word I say, I brought one of my dad's older inventions for Show and Tell. Let it amuse you until the day Zim finally takes over and you see him for the horrific monster he really is."

"Your dad RAWKS!"

Dib sighed again, deciding to ignore that particular comment for now.

"Yes," he repeated tonelessly, "my dad is amazing. All of his Real Science! and constant nagging makes him especially dear to me. Anyway, as I'm sure you guys remember, you sent me off to the Crazy House for Boys awhile back. Yeah, you remember. Anyway, I brought the device with me that caused the whole problem in the first place, with a few minor modifications. Why, you ask?" His eyes narrowed as Zim entered the room again, now GIR free. "For a demonstration. Why don't we give Real Science a chance, shall we? I'm sure it will expose Zim for the hideous fraud that he is. I need a volunteer."

No hands rose to volunteer and Zim smirked from his new seat in the doorway.

"Pathetic Dib, can't even find a volunteer to help prove his sanity," he cackled. "Poor, pathetic Dib."

"Well, if you're volunteering Zim," Dib remarked, "I'm sure I'll find some way to prove my sanity. Come over here, Zim."

Zim complied, looking amused at the idea of him helping prove Dib sane.

"Fine, foul Earth stench," he sighed, looking at him strangely. "Though I doubt this will prove that you're anything close to sane."

"Observe," Dib stated authoritatively, holding up an oddly shaped device in his hand. "This simple device was originally designed to peer into alternate dimensions. I'm sure Zim remembers how that all turned out, don't you Zim?"

Zim scoffed and looked furiously at the crowd of children.

"The filthy Earth child lies," he stated coldly. "I have recollection of the effects of that device...other than your staggering betrayal when you LEFT me to ROT inside your ENORMOUS head!"

Dib looked encouragingly at the class, hoping that at least one of them would catch Zim and question just how Dib had left Zim to rot in his head, but there was no response. Dull and unresponsive eyes were the only response Dib received.

"Fine," he sighed, bordering on mind numbing depression at his peers' ignorance, but he quickly snapped back to his hopeful self in seconds. "Anyway, since the improper use of this device was disastrous and almost plunged this world into a shadowy apocalypse, I've done some modifications to it that change the output. Neat, huh? Anyway, when designing it, I was trying- as usual- to think of the best possible way to expose Zim for the monster he really is and I came up with this."

He threw a confident look at the now nervous alien.

"This device, when input with certain biological signals that it scans for, can effectively read a person's mind. Through the output end is projected a visual image of what the subject deems to be their happiest moments." His grin turned almost sadistic in nature as he glared at Zim. "So whether the subject's happiest moments were of being assigned to this planet, or of hugging a cold unfeeling robot arm, we'll be able to see them all."

He advanced on the shocked alien suddenly, causing Zim to gasp and flail wildly in protest.

"Stand away!" he screamed, working himself into one of his usual panics. "Stay away from my brilliant head!"

Dib grinned proudly at the look on Zim's face. Well this was certainly one of his more interesting show and tells. He hadn't had this much fun since he'd brought his dad's failed attempt at breeding a cow and a gorilla to class.

"What Zim? Afraid that you'll expose your horrible alien society?" he teased as he chased Zim into the doorway.  
  
"Why you-"

Zim's outburst was soon cut off by a familiar metallic rumbling. From behind Zim, the sound of squishy metallic footsteps could be heard clearly. Within seconds, GIR reappeared at the door, waving his dog arms cutely.

"My head smells like a pinecone!" he announced.

From Zim's desk, Ms. Bitters emitted a growl that sounded like a dying car engine.

"ZIM! I thought I told you to have that dog shot!"

GIR made an adorable little face at these words, causing half of the class to gush over his incredible cuteness. Human behavior was baffling to Dib, even though he was human himself. Here he was engaged in a battle with Zim with one of his plans actually on the verge of working and no one seemed to care...or at least as long as there was something as cute as GIR to gush over.

This was ridiculous! He was fighting for the sake of the Earth with everything he had within him, and all people seemed to notice was the adorably cute GIR. It was this behavior that confirmed the genius of Zim's plan with Ultra Peepi. Stupid alien, using cuteness to distract the masses....

While Dib stood there, musing about the unfairness of the human race, Zim sensed his opportunity. Within seconds the Irken soldier had grabbed the device from Dib's hand, broken off the end of it, and managed to whip it at Dib's giant head.

Dib turned just in time to have the device collide with his face, the device knocking off and cracking the edge of his glasses.

"What the-"

A brilliant flash of red light erupted from the machine that seared into Dib's eyes. He wasn't sure, but judging from the searing pain in his head, he was pretty sure that his brain was melting.

Zim saw his enemy in pain and burst into hysterical laughter.

"Not so confident now, are we Dib-beast?" he cackled evilly.

The rest of the class barely noticed Zim's victory and the horrible pain Dib was in, as they were currently absorbed in watching GIR do a little jig.

"Ow," Dib whimpered as he rubbed his head gingerly. He was going to complain some more, but was stopped when he saw the hand that had just been touching his head. "Ahhh! My hand!"

Zim gave him a curious look, and peered at his nemesis' hand from where he stood.

"Cease your whining, worm filth," he sneered. "There's nothing wrong with your inferior hand organ."

Zim's reassurances did nothing to calm Dib's screaming. He blinked, trying to clear his vision, but each time he saw the same thing. His hand had disappeared, and this sudden invisibility was quickly spreading up his arm. Various parts of his anatomy were disappearing suddenly, blinking out of view as if they had never existed in the first place.

"Oh god," he cried as a familiar sense of déjà vu overwhelmed him. "The device!" His vision crackled momentarily, his familiar classroom snapping out of view only to be replaced by a darkly horrific landscape. "It's happening again!"

Darkness and nausea enveloped him, as his head began to swirl in circles. He shuddered and crawled closer to the curious alien.

"Dib?" Zim looked excited at the turn of events. "Are you dying?"

Dib grimaced and wrapped his hand around Zim's ankle tightly.

"It's...happening again," he exclaimed weakly. "I'm not going there alone. Not again."

The alien looked at his enemy as if the boy had grown three heads in the past two minutes.

"What's happening again? There's nothing wrong with your hand."

Dib screamed again, then collapsed silently at Zim's feet.

"Dib?"

There was no reply, save for a slight twitch of Dib's arm as his mind sank into oblivion.

Gripping a nearby desk for safety, Zim reached out and kicked Dib a few times in the side to see if he moved. He didn't.

Since GIR had stopped dancing to see what his master was up to, the class had just clued into the most recent events. None of them appeared to be too sympathetic.

"Zim!"

The poorly disguised alien snapped to attention upon hearing his name called by his teacher.

"Sir!"

Ms. Bitters growled and peered at Dib's still form on the floor.

"If he's still breathing, escort Dib down to the nurse's office," she ordered. "If he dies, you're assuming the skool's liability!"

Zim looked at his teacher and then at the child still clawing at his ankles in disgust. He had to take DIB, his nemesis to the nurse's to recover? That would involve touching the filthy child-beast, unless he dragged him by that stupid hair of his....Still there had to be an advantage to this scenario somewhere.

He looked at GIR and gestured for him to drag the Dib child for him. As the dog struggled to grab hold of the unconscious child, Zim gave his teacher one of his most dazzling evil grins.

"If he dies, can I have his desk?"


	2. Chapter 2

* * *

_For when my outward action doth demonstrate_   
_The native act and figure of my heart_   
_In complement extern, 'tis not long after_   
_But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve_   
_For daws to peck at: I am not what I am._   
_-Iago, Othello_

* * *

A cold wind whistled around Dib's large head as he lay on the cold ground. He didn't dare open his eyes lest his vision confirm his worst fears. If he opened his eyes, would he still be in his classroom at Zim's feet, or would he be....somewhere else?

The thought of being somewhere different unnerved him, as he knew what the consequences of the change of scenery would be. He should have known better than to touch that stupid device; hadn't it already caused enough damage? If there was one thing his father constantly was warning him about, it was to never mix science with the paranormal. Why did he continue to have such delusions, thinking that he could appease his father with Real Science while pursuing the paranormal at same time? It was becoming horribly clear that two should never interact with each other.

"Diiib...."

A woman's voice echoed through his mind, and Dib's eyes popped open, looking for the source of the voice. This definitely wasn't his classroom!

He sat up, holding his throbbing head as he looked around him for some sign of direction. He was here...again.

Here turned out to be that same nightmarish world the device had sent him and Zim to previously on Halloween. The streets and buildings were all so different and dark from the world he knew, yet they were still oddly familiar. This was his world...gone seriously wrong.

There was no sign of Zim anywhere around him, which was odd since Zim had been taken with him last time they jumped to this world, simply because Dib had touched him when he begun to vanish. It was also odd, because whenever he used to jump across to this nightmarish world, he would arrive in the place parallel to the location he left in his world. This time, he wasn't at the skool, or anywhere that looked to be near it.

He had woken up on the ground of an empty street. There were broken down houses all around him, but no one to be seen anywhere. No cars or strange parade of monsters could be seen on the road either. He was completely alone.

The wind whistled around his ears once more, carrying with it the same mysterious woman's voice. He could hear the voice clearly, but other than his name, he couldn't understand a word of what the invisible voice was saying. It was like listening to someone else's conversation from across a noisy room; he could hear the voice but the message was lost to him.

"Hello?"

He got to his feet and peered nervously around, looking for assistance. Where were the monsters he remembered? The inhabitants of this alternate world were based on the people he knew back in his world, and though they frightened him horribly, he would at least be grateful for some company in this eerie world. There had been a strange version of his family, right? He hated to think of the evil version of his already very scary sister Gaz, but at least she would be a slightly familiar face...right?

"All right," he said, panic working its way into his voice. "Yep. All I need is a plan. A plan." He started to back up fearfully as the maddening voice grew louder in his mind. "All I have to do is wait for a while. Before it took days before I was finally trapped here last time, so I'll probably just jump back home any time now. Yep. Any time."

The voice was practically screaming through his mind now, though even at a deafening pitch he still couldn't understand a word of what she was saying. If the screaming continued for much longer, he was pretty sure that his ears would explode. It was so supernaturally annoying...until it suddenly stopped.

Dib was just about to breathe a sigh of relief, when he backed into something...or rather someone.

"That's a very nice plan," the voice from behind him sneered. "Only, you'll be waiting a very long time as you are already trapped here. Inferior Dib. Leave it to you to think of something that stupid."

Despite his horror, Dib's eyes widened with a happy surprise. Finally! Something real and tangible! Though the scenery was extremely different than what he was used to, he knew that irritating voice anywhere.

"Zim!" he shouted, turning around to face his nemesis, delighted to see something familiar, even if it was his hated enemy. However, any witty comeback he had died in his throat as he looked at the creature before him, resulting in an embarrassing little squeak. "Zim?"

The creature laughed Zim's laugh, and spoke in Zim's voice and carried a strong resemblance to the little alien, but there could be no denying the obvious truth: this was not Zim.

"I'd forgotten how you talk to yourself," it mused in amusement. "It's no wonder they locked you up in the first place; you're obviously insane. Still, it is...refreshing to see your face again."

"Again?" Dib repeated, his eyes so wide that they were almost rivaling the size of his head. "I've never seen...you...before in my life! Who are you?"  
  
The Zim creature laughed again and shook his head in sad amusement.

"Who do you think I am?" he shot. "How many arch nemeses do you have?"

Dib struggled to breathe as he looked at the creature in front of him. He would not show fear...it wasn't all that scary, just....surprising. Yeah, it was surprising.

After all, it did a lot like Zim. It was the same size, and had all the same features of the undisguised alien, only....only Zim was green. This duplicate was a dusty shade of gray, as if some one had taken an eraser and erased all the color from his form. And his eyes! No longer were they the vibrant color of rubies, now they were as dark and dull as coal. They still had that evil beady look in them, but if Dib looked hard enough, he could see something else hidden in his gaze, though he had no idea how to describe it.

This Zim lacked that special sparkle that made Zim so charismatic. This Zim was still obviously insane, and egotistical judging by the cocky look he was giving Dib, but he was...sad?

No that couldn't be it. When was the last time he'd seen Zim sad? Sure he got disappointed, and had crazy mood swings that rivaled GIR's, but Dib had never seen the Irken invader actually seem saddened.

Zim turned sharply, revealing thicker and jagged antennae than Dib was used to seeing on his rival and a thin gray scar just below his left antennae. He still wore that stupid Invader outfit, but instead of being ridiculously pink, it was as black as the world around them. There was something...spooky about Zim.

"So, you're Zim?" he asked doubtfully. "Why don't you look anything like you usually do then? Is this some new skin condition?"

Zim cackled hysterically, causing Dib to cringe slightly, but the Irken copycat didn't come any closer to him as Dib feared.

"Pitiful, Dib-human," he laughed. His odd antennae jostled together as he laughed, creeping Dib out. "You're obviously confused. I always did like that about you. You were always so gullible, yet never gullible enough to persuade you of my normalness. You have no idea of where you are, do you?"

Dib shook his head carefully, watching every step Zim took anxiously.

"Not really, no," he admitted defensively. "This looks like that strange dimension we got stuck in on Halloween, but there's something...different about it."

"Very observant," the pale Zim remarked, as he stared at Dib in a strange manner. "You're close, anyway. There are many parallel dimensions in this universe; too many to number. The odds of successfully revisiting the same one at random is near impossible. And yet you are at an advantage."

"An advantage? How is there an advantage? Look around you! Look at you! This is not what I call an advantage!"

Zim waved his hand dismissively as if Dib's complaints about his appearance didn't bother him in the slightest.

"Whatever your INFERIOR opinions are," he replied, "there is an advantage. You see the device you use to travel to these dimensions, it is designed to read off the thoughts of a person. Hypothetically, using the same device would have sent you to the same dimension, however if there was even the slightest variation to the device, the results will be skewered."

Realization hit Dib in an instant.

"Zim broke it!" he exclaimed, then looked very confused. "I mean, you broke it...right?"

Zim shook his head.

"Wrong," he declared. "It wasn't me who broke the device. See the dimension you would have gone to, provided Zim hadn't ruined that chance, is the product of your large headed imagination, surely you remember that much. The monsters there were products of your imagination and wanted very badly to escape. However, this place is different, very different. The monsters _here_ have no desire to ever leave. We have only one thing in common with that dimension."

"And what's that?" Dib demanded, then thought some more. "And how do you know what the other dimension is like, or what happened? And if you're not Zim, then who _are_ you?"

"Easily answered," Zim answered, as if all of Dib's questions were boring him. "Though I thought you'd have a better understanding than this. Surely this place looks familiar to you?"

Dib shook his head and the dark version of Zim sighed.

"The one thing this dimension has in common with the one you previously visited is you. That's how I know what it looks like, or what happened when you were forced there. In a way, we control what happens there; our influence goes farther than you realize."

"And why's that?"

Zim gave him a devious smirk.

"Because that place was only your imagination," he declared. "This place is _you_. Dib, welcome to your subconscious mind."

Dib was astounded. He opened his mouth, but nothing came out. Quickly, he shut his mouth and reopened it, hoping for a better result.

"What?"

The dark Zim sighed once again and shot him a hopeless look.

"We're in your subconscious!" he snapped impatiently. "Within your inner mind! You saw the product of your imagination in the other dimension, but don't you realize that it's your subconscious thoughts that rule your imagination? We're better! I know you tried to drag my real life counterpart down here with you, because _subconsciously_ , you wanted help. You knew what lay ahead of you and you needed the input of someone you trust to tell you the truth. However, this is not a place for others to visit because in reality it really isn't a parallel dimension. We're inside of your gargantuan head in the deepest recesses of your mind. Everything here has a double meaning, some even have triple meanings that you at a conscious level are unaware of. This is a place far too dangerous to bring another person to. It cannot be allowed."

Dib looked suspiciously at the fake Zim before him.

"Technically Zim isn't a person," he reminded the image of his nemesis. "Do you really expect me to believe that stupid story?" He scoffed. "For all I know, you could be some monster projecting this world into my mind as some kind of trap. If this is my mind, then why is it so dark here? I'm not a dark person!"

Zim's black eyes narrowed with frustration.

"This isn't the cheerful front you put up for those idiots in your world!" he snapped. "This is serious; this is your mind! This is the only place you can't run from, the only truths that you can't deny! You STUPID human! This place is dark, because it is how you know the world to be deep down. It's dark because when you close your eyes at night, you know they all laugh at you. You realize that your sister would rather run out of batteries than acknowledge that she knows you! The air is bitter because you know it's a façade when your father displays the word love on his floating screen! These are the truths you avoid, the ones you spend all of your time hiding from! This is your deepest part of your soul and it's dark and it's dreary because so is your life!"

Dib looked disturbed at the fake alien's knowledge of his inner struggles, but still fought against the belief that this place was the own product of his misery.

His life wasn't bad; it really wasn't! Just because Tak's ship had rejected his personality...well it didn't mean anything! Just because a machine thought he was a pathetic loser, it didn't mean he really was. Irken machinery was a little screwy to begin with anyway.

"So if this is my mind," he demanded of the alien imposter, "why are you here to greet me? Shouldn't there be a version of me lurking around here somewhere? Why would my greatest enemy show up to welcome me?"  
  
Zim suddenly wavered in his confidence and almost looked as if he were about to reply. Instead, he stared at Dib for a moment, then cast his dark gaze on the ground.

"That's not important," he replied uneasily. "That's not a conversation to be having right now. Right now we have to get off the streets. Your mind is a dangerous place; you don't want to get caught off guard."

He turned away from the boy and began to stride away, but Dib stopped him.

"I'm supposed to be afraid of my mind?" he laughed. "That's an even stupider excuse than usual, Zim. Now tell me the truth, what's the deal with you anyway? Are you like my own version of the devil or something, sent here to torment me in a spooky place?"

The words froze Zim where he stood. It was as if he had been electrified; standing stiff as a board before Dib.

"No," he whispered, his voice barely audible over the wind. "You're my torment."

"Huh?"

Dib stared at the brooding shadow for a minute unable to grasp whatever was going on here. This Zim was far more secretive than the Zim he knew. Normally Zim would have had his entire plan spilled out in elaborate detail for him in less than five minutes, all while screaming about his superiority. This Zim, this subconscious reflection of Zim, was secretive, as if there was some secret he was guarding with his life. Like something could be hidden from him in his own mind!

The wind suddenly picked up, filling the air with the garbage that lined the streets.

"Just come on," Zim urged suddenly, feeling the wind change and growing more nervous. "I'll explain it to you later."

Dib opened his mouth to reply, but he was cut off when a piece of paper collided with his giant head. Frowning, he unfurled the crumpled paper off his face, and glanced at it quickly. To his surprise, there was writing on the paper, and not only that, but it was _his_ writing!

He scanned the paper in earnest this time, reading the cryptic message written in his own handwriting.  
  
_There's something in here, a twisted darkness, a festering sickness that plagues my waking hours. It consumes me until I fall to the madness, leaving bitter tears in my wake._  
Leviathan's tooth is embedded in my nightmares; his footsteps freeze my pounding heart. I cannot escape the darkness billowing around me.  
I must get out. I have to flee. Flee from the monster within me.  
  
"Who's Leviathan?" Dib wondered, holding the paper sideways as if it would help him uncover the secrets the message contained.  
  
Zim froze at the mention of the name, cringing immensely.

"Don't ask," he hissed, deploying his long spider legs and beginning to pace anxiously. "And don't just go around screaming that name!"

"I wasn't screaming," Dib pointed out, shoving the paper in the pocket of his trench coat. He looked at Zim's anxious form and smirked. "What are you so worried about? I mean this is all in my head, right? I couldn't think of anything that horrible."

Zim froze in mid pace and stared at the boy in disbelief.

"Only in your head?" he repeated, obviously in a deep state of disbelief. "You STUPID human! You should fear it all the more for being in your mind! Is your head so large that you still can't grasp such a simple concept? This is your _mind_! You really don't think that you control everything that happens in your mind, do you? Jealousy, damage, lust, not to mention all those subliminal messages in your filthy Earth programming! And you think you control them all?"

Dib looked away from the shadow's gaze, unable to admit defeat. So he'd oversimplified a situation...he'd never admit defeat to Zim in any form.

"My head's not big," he offered weakly, realizing too late that purposely avoiding admitting defeat was practically the same to Zim as admitting it. That stupid alien and his ego....

"So you begin to see the truth after all," Zim purred, delighting in Dib's ignorance. He rested on his spider legs smugly. "The monsters in your head, whether you recognize their presence or not, are real. They are real, and they can hurt you in ways you couldn't even begin to realize. The guilt of cheating on a test. The crushing power of unrequited love. All of these emotions are demons within you beyond your control. How can you expect to control jealousy when it's driven people to murder? How do you expect to tame passion by yourself when it's gotten the better of people far stronger than you? How-"

"Enough already," Dib interrupted suddenly. "I get it, geez. If it's possible, I think I like the normal version of you better, the one not in my head. As much as I hate him, at least he doesn't ramble on like you do. All I wanted to know was who Leviathan was! I didn't ask for a psychology lecture."

Zim's small body shook with rage, and without warning, he darkened to a shadowy shade and painfully stretched his form until he towered over Dib in height.

"Silence!" he shouted, appearing to be very imposing in this new, and powerful looking form. His eyes glowed a brighter hue of black against the pale gray complexion of his skin as his body began to fade into a malevolent mist.

This sudden twist of events frightened Dib more than anything else he had seen in this world so far. This was Zim, yet so much more...dangerous. Did this copycat Zim even have a corporeal body or was he merely a shadow of Dib's mind? He certainly seemed to be a shadow more than anything else, with his faded skin, and odd ability to transform certain aspects of his form at will.

"Z-Zim," Dib stammered, backing away from the opposing figure perched on spider legs. "You're...a ghost?"

"No, Dib," the nightmarish Zim corrected. "I'm no ghost, and trust me, I'm as real as you are. I may be Zim, but I'm the Zim your mind has constructed subconsciously. You gave me my form and my life, but as I was just saying...sometimes your subconscious can develop a mind of its own and work independently of your consciousness."

"Wait," Dib replied, his fear momentarily gone. "If you're what my mind created you to be, why aren't you like three feet tall and scaly? Zim's a hideous monster, but you...you're kind of cool looking. What's up with that?"

He felt a spider leg wrap itself around his waist, and he was jerked up into the air to face the shadow he was conversing with.

"You know, for someone with a head as gargantuan as yours, you'd think that you'd understand by now," Zim growled, waving Dib around as he spoke. "I told you, you can't control your subconscious thoughts. Maybe at a shallow level you think Zim's some grotesque monster, but deep down, obviously you've had some second thoughts about that."

Dib struggled against the robotic leg that gripped him, furious at what this imposter was implying.

"That's stupid!" he cried in protest. "I would never- Why would I- My head's not big!"

There was a rumbling in the far off distance that wiped the smirk off Zim's face within seconds. His face once again turned serious, and as he became more somber, his body began to dissolve and rematerialize into the shorter, less intimidating form Dib had first seen.

"Curse you foul human and your infinite questions!" he shouted, tightening his metallic grip on the boy. "I was just going to dump you off in a safer neighborhood, maybe have a minion or two look after you, but it's too late for that now. She has your scent now. Damn! I'll have to take you back to Xanadu. You've left me no other choice."

"Wait...what?"

Dib wasn't even given time to think before Zim's spider legs began to scurry away at a frightening pace off to some place he had never heard of. It was a frightening thought to have to trust his own interpretation of his greatest enemy, but what other choice did he have? He could only hope that whoever or whatever Xanadu was, is was better than hanging around to find out what exactly Zim appeared to be so afraid of. He was still skeptical of the existence of this strange Leviathan.  
This was his mind after all, who would know about it better than himself? ...right?

* * *


	3. Chapter 3

* * *

_Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,_  
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,  
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean:  
And mid this tumult Kubla heard from far  
Ancestral voices prophesying war!  
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Kubla Khan"

* * *

Zim slowed his pace slightly all of a sudden, surprising Dib out of his deep thoughts. The human had still been reflecting on his dark surroundings, and trying to absorb all that the twisted version of Zim had told him.

It was surprising to see that this dark place was in fact, his subconscious mind, or at least it came as a surprise to him. He must have been deeper in denial of his depression than he had originally thought. Sure he tried to keep up a positive front, hoping for the one day the world would thank him for his valiant efforts, and the one day that Zim was actually exposed as the alien creature he actually was, but the more he looked around him, the more he doubted that day would ever come. Maybe the world was right; maybe being in such denial really had driven him insane.

Either way, he had to escape this foul and dark land and get back to his reality as soon as possible. Who knew what evil the real Zim was plotting at that very minute?

It was a thought that was quickly becoming redundant, but it had to be considered. Zim was dangerous...and yet Dib was forced to place his life in the hands of an extremely suspicious version of the alien. The thought didn't thrill him, but even though it was his mind he was stuck in, he knew nothing about it, not when compared to this duplicate Zim.

Speaking of Zim, he was staring in pure hatred at a nearby wall. It was wall of a store, or small business, nothing too fancy, but it infuriated the Irken imposter.

Dib squirmed against Zim's grasp on him to better see what the big deal was. He managed to worm his way out of the spider leg without skewering himself, probably because Zim was distracted and quickly dropped to the ground with all the grace of a cat. He stared up blankly at the wall, noticing for the first time that there was a picture posted on it.

It was a painting, a dark and peculiar painting of what looked to be a dragon of some sort. A sea dragon....

He stepped closer to the captivating picture to examine it further. From behind him, Zim released a low, and angry growl.

"She's getting desperate now to post this here," he growled, though Dib was too busy ignoring him to ask him what he meant by that.

The picture was magnificent, the colors and brushstrokes capturing the very essence of the subject. Dib could vividly see each individual scale on the hide of the massive dragon, and every sharp dagger of a tooth. It was a perfect rendition of everything Dib would expect a sea monster to be right down to the glint of blood on the powerful dragon fangs. The body coiled around itself like a powerful snake, right about to strike. Waves churned around it, adding to the majesty of the dragon's scaly form. If ever there was a master of the sea, this creature had to be it.

"Who drew this?" Dib questioned, turning his head on weird angles to examine every aspect of the painting.

Zim froze at he noticed which painting Dib was referring to; his eyes growing colder as he thought of how to phrase his answer.

"You did," he replied coldly. "Stop looking at it."

Dib laughed.

"Yeah right, like I could draw this!" he replied. "The only thing I can draw are stick figures...and well, you on an autopsy table, but still. It's fairly obvious that I didn't draw this." A thought suddenly occurred to him, and he turned to Zim for confirmation. "Which me do you mean? Me meaning my subconscious thoughts, or me meaning the version of me you won't talk about?"

A shudder ran through Zim as he stared at the picture that captivated Dib and he turned quickly away to be rid of the sight.

"Both," he answered coldly. "You're starting to understand things better aren't you? I could have drawn that hideous thing, but really it still would have been your mind that compelled me to draw it, making the actual painter irrelevant in the end."

"But you said that you operate independently of my subconscious," Dib pointed out vaguely, still captivated by the brilliance of the painting. "If you can change your form at your own will, surely you can draw something I didn't tell you to draw."

Zim sighed hopelessly.

"Yes," he admitted, "but I am still bound by the guidelines set out by your mind. I can only change myself within the confines that you set out for me. I can't change into say, a rabbit, because your mind couldn't grasp that form as Zim. I can only alter so much, and I can only paint outside the limitations set out for me to a degree. The painting, had it been done by me, would have been slightly different in appearance due to my own sense of style, but the subject would still have been the same."

"So who did draw it?" Dib asked again. "You said both mes worked on it. Does that mean that my evil twin in this world really drew it?"

Zim folded his arms defensively, obviously uncomfortable with talking about the current subject.

"I don't see how it's important, but yes, it was your avatar in this land that your mind chose to work through. Dib composed that wretched...thing."

"I like it," Dib proclaimed, if only to spite the cranky dark version of Zim. It was an intriguing painting to be sure, but there was something...off about it. It was haunting and though he couldn't explain it, his head was beginning to hurt just looking at it for so long.

"What is that thing? Some sea monster?"

"A sea monster, yes," Zim agreed reluctantly. "One of the most powerful. The subject of a great many legends. You always seemed to be enthralled with it before...before."

"Before what?" Dib questioned, though he knew he'd never get an answer from the tight-lipped Irken imposter. There was something familiar about it, but what?

"Just...before," Zim answered vaguely, beginning to pace around the boy. "I think we should go. Now."

The jaws of the monster seemed to almost widen as Dib continued to stare at it. The eyes glowed a dark red, as the waves around the monster almost appeared to churn. If he stood there for a second longer, he feared the picture would devour him...yet he couldn't tear himself away from it.

"Is that...Leviathan?"

He whispered softly, but he might as well have been screaming as far as Zim was concerned. The Irken leapt up onto his now deployed spider legs and growled menacingly.

"Watch what you say, you stinking human!" he warned while grabbing Dib roughly with a mechanical leg. Another leg made a movement towards the painting as if to tear it to pieces, but stopped just before making contact with the picture. Zim grimaced, and retracted his leg, opting instead to turn around and leave.

This action confused Dib, who was now just regaining his full awareness after being seduced by the painting's power. Did Zim spare the picture because he wanted to, or because he didn't have the power to destroy it? And if he had wanted to spare it, then why? It was the only thing that seemed to bother him more than Dib's endless questions. Nothing in this place seemed to make sense!

He sighed as he watched crooked houses with warped fences and dead trees all pass him by as Zim ran like a madman to wherever they were headed. This place was truly a nightmare, and as interesting as it was, he wanted more than anything to go back home and start all those detentions he'd received before arriving here. He was sick of double meanings, and of his own twisted thoughts already, and he hadn't even been here for an entire day.

"Where are we going?" he demanded of Zim suddenly.

Zim scoffed, looking irritated at the interruption.

"I already told you," he replied irritably. "I'm taking you to Xanadu. It's the only place she won't find you. She hasn't worked up the gall to appear there yet, and she knows that I'll tear her apart if she ever does. Xanadu is mine and she knows that."

Dib didn't even bother trying to push his luck asking who "she" was or what exactly Xanadu was. Zim was already annoyed with him enough after seeing that poster, and he wasn't about to annoy him any further. Zim was all he had in this twisted world, and if he were to annoy him too badly, he doubted he'd be able to survive an hour alone in this twisted nightmare should Zim decide to ditch him. As much as he longed to finally understand what Zim was talking about, he figured he'd be better off just waiting. Knowing Zim, he'd eventually crack sometime.

It wasn't too long until the houses they passed by began to look familiar to Dib. There, up on that distant hill was the shadowy outline of the skool. And there! That was the street sign that he always passed on the way to Zim's house! Sure it was a little broken, and the words were barely legible, but it was the same landmark none the less.

Suddenly Dib had a pretty good idea of where they were headed.

"You're headed to your base, aren't you?" he exclaimed. "How are we going to be safe there? I can break into there with my eyes closed!"

"SILENCE! You have no idea of my defenses, feeble Dib," Zim snapped, tightening his grip on Dib harshly. "You'll see."

And see Dib did. It was hard not to.

The odd green house that Zim had occupied since the day he arrived on Earth was gone...or at least Dib thought it was. It was hard to see around the massive marble fence that encompassed the area. While Zim's old lot had been fairly small with a small area reserved for a lawn, this lot was huge, and quite different from the place he remembered.

"Real inconspicuous, Zim," Dib laughed. "You expect to fit in with a place like that? What did you do, tear down your next door neighbors' houses?"

"Theirs and several others," Zim agreed, placing his hand on a square metallic area on the massive marble wall that guarded his impressive base. The square flashed in acknowledgement and a slab of wall suddenly disappeared to reveal an entrance. "I think you'll agree that this is a far more efficient security system than what you were expecting, no?"

Dib's mouth refused to move as he stared at the place Zim now called home. Through the door he could see the remains of Zim's original green house, though vines had begun to grow over it, showing just how often it was used. Instead it was dwarfed by a colossal building to it's left that looked much like a palace, and far more used.

"This is your base?" Dib managed to squeak out, to which Zim nodded.

They passed through the door way, and the slab of marble immediately slammed shut behind them. Zim lowered his enemy to the ground and released him, quickly storing his useful spider legs back in his PAK.

"Welcome to Xanadu," Zim stated, none of the excitement that Dib expected from him appearing in his voice. One would think that having a base this size and quality would have made Zim of all people insanely happy. Instead he almost appeared to loathe the place. "Yep. Good ol' Xanadu."

Dib couldn't think of an adequate response to that statement, so instead he settled on staring at the place in awe. The familiar green house was nothing special, as it looked like it was about to fall over any minute anyway, but the monstrosity of the building next to it, now that was something impressive.

This new addition looked gloomy, as every thing in this wretched world did, but it held a sort of majesty about it that Dib couldn't deny. It looked extremely royal, yet gothic in design as if some nutty king had awoken one day and decided to build a palace based on a nightmare. The walls were black, yet smooth and Dib suspected that from the look of things, the entire building had been built using solid marble. But where had Zim gotten the money to build something that extravagant? And was he even concerned with keeping a low profile in this world? It certainly didn't look like it.

Still it was exactly the way Dib would have expected an egomaniac like Zim to live: full of extravagance.

"You live here by yourself?" Dib asked, suddenly regaining his voice. "You could fit an entire army in here and still have room!"

Zim shrugged apathetically and started towards the building.

"Yeah, well, Invaders don't share," he remarked without turning around to face the boy. "It's just me and GIR...and of course my servants as well. No, sharing isn't something I do well; you know that."

Dib followed closely behind the alien imposter, trying to absorb the beautiful, yet oddly twisted scenery around him. His view landed to his right, just past the enormous palace like structure to something just peeking out from behind the building's shadow.

"What's that?" Dib questioned, pointing to the odd structure.

From what he could see, there was a tower there, hidden just behind the main castle like structure, hiding away from sight as if it was ashamed to exist. It was beautiful in design, and like the main building no expense had been spared in its construction. Yet its beauty was scarred by ugly, binding vines that choked their way around the tower.

This lack of upkeep puzzled Dib. Why would Zim construct such a beautiful structure in this dark place, only to keep it hidden in the shadows and neglected?

Zim looked vaguely to where Dib was pointing and frowned slightly.

"Hubris," he replied, his voice barely above a whisper. There was a fondness in his voice for the tower, as well as a thinly veiled contempt that Dib just couldn't understand. "I don't want you anywhere near that tower. Ever. No one is allowed there."

"Hubris," Dib repeated slowly, ignoring Zim's commands. Why would he let a shadow of his mind tell him what to do? He barely listened to the real Zim, let alone one he thought up. "That's a neat word. Hubris. Sounds kinda familiar."

Zim grimaced and resumed walking at a faster pace. His body tensed with a hidden darkness upon hearing the word, as if he couldn't stand hearing Dib say it. It felt too much like an accusation coming from him.

"Shut up, human-monkey filth. You don't know what you're talking about." Zim marched ahead of the boy who didn't bother trying to argue. There was no point to arguing with a creature like Zim, real or imagined.

The alien paused at the large, gold framed doorway and waited. Within seconds, the doors opened for him, allowing the alien to march confidently inwards, with Dib trailing behind him. The interior of the palace base was just as beautifully crafted as the outside. Every wall was the same dark marble as the outer walls, giving the place an eerie, yet regal appearance. The lighting was dim, as candles and whatever sunlight that poked through the windows in the dark world were the only lights that seemed to be allowed in the building. The inside was fairly simple, with only a few decorative pictures appearing on the walls.

A door to the side opened, revealing a wispy shadow which Dib assumed was too weak to assume a form like Zim's. This place just kept getting weirder.

"Lord Zim," it greeted, it's voice sounding oddly like air being released from a bottle. It sent chills down Dib's spine just to hear it. "You've returned."

Zim nodded absent mindedly and looked around distractedly.

"That I have," he confirmed. "She's on the loose again. I knew it had been quiet for far too long. She's after the Dib and we must do everything in our power to see that she doesn't capture him. The last thing I need is for her to get her scaly claws into him. No, he must be protected." He glared at the shadow before him. "I leave his safety to you for the time being. Do not fail me."

The words hovered in the air like an unseen threat, and though Dib couldn't be sure, he thought he almost saw the shadow wince.  
  
"Y-yes sir," it vowed. "Nothing shall happen to him. I will make sure that Lev-"

"Never say that name!"

Zim's voice rang through the dark hallway like a gunshot. His dimly lit form began to shift again, but stopped as his angry gaze fell on Dib. Just looking at the startled boy seemed to temporarily soothe him, most likely sparing that now cowering shadow servant from a most horrible fate.

"You know better than that," he chided, and turned his back to the both of them, striding towards a dark doorway that only appeared as he began to approach it. "Show Dib to the room that I expect him to reside in until I can figure out what to do with him. You know the one."

The shadow bowed fearfully as Zim disappeared. Turning to Dib, it quivered slightly, turning into an illuminating mist.

"Follow me," it ordered and the now beyond confused Dib complied without question.

There were so many questions floating through his brain, and he still had no answers for any of them.


	4. Chapter 4

* * *

_Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you're fighting for something? For more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom? Or truth? Perhaps peace? Yes? No? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson. Vagaries of perception. The temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose._  
-Agent Smith, Matrix Revolutions

* * *

"Why do you let him treat you like that?" Dib demanded of the mist he was trailing. "How can he afford this place? Who is Zim so afraid of anyway? What's-"  
  
"Never question the Lord," the shadow interrupted dully. "It is not permitted."  
  
"Not permitted?" Dib repeated in shock. "How can this place be part of me? I always question Zim! I question everything! That's how life's supposed to be! If we don't question things, just think about what will happen! Politicians will be given free reign, educational standards will drop. Science will stagnate if all we believe is the status quo. In fact, our entire society will stagnate if we never question anything. Questioning is part of what makes us human."  
  
The shadow quivered above him, probably out of distaste for his outburst.  
  
"But I am human," it replied with an icy tone. "Questioning leads you no where, even I can see that. Questioning leads to distrust, undermines faith in a government, or system while breaking science, religion and other such systems into factions, divided against each other. It may be a human response, but it is hardly an ideal one."  
  
The boy squinted at the shadowy blob above him in disbelief.  
  
"How can you say that, embrace human nature and its established institutions and still allow Zim to order you around like that?" he demanded. "He's an alien! His mission is a threat to our very existence! He'll destroy all of the institutions you seem to love so much!"  
  
A sigh escaped the shadow that claimed to be human. It certainly didn't look human as it was both shapeless and dreary, not to mention its sheep like view of this world. Dib was suspicious of it, whatever it was. While he had wanted to find other humans, he just couldn't accept the idea of humanity without at least some resistance to Zim...well at least not the society in a place that was supposed to be in his mind.  
  
"How much is Zim paying you?" Dib asked, trying a different approach. "I know you can't serve him for free, after all, money's what motivates people right? Where did he even get all this money anyway? Did he like rob a bank or something?"  
  
There was a release of air from the shadow that sounded eerily like a laugh, though it was too...wrong to be a laugh by any of Dib's standards.  
  
"How can you still not see the truth?" it whispered gleefully, glad to have the opportunity to shut the big headed non-believer up. "You blame society for being ignorant, for not realizing the truth before them, but now, it is you who cannot grasp the truth. You and your big head don't want to see the truth of this world, despite all that you say."  
  
"What is the truth, then?" Dib challenged, getting sick of this shadowy escort. "Huh? What the Hell counts as truth here anyway? The only thing down here is lies, and I've had enough of those to last a lifetime. This place is definitely not my subconscious. My subconscious would be far more sympathetic!"  
  
"Your subconscious is what you let it be," the shadow replied smugly. "Tabula Rasa. Your own choices and experiences shape who you are. This world and its current ruler is your own fault. No one can tell you how to run your own mind, except your own self. If your mind's more messed up than you were expecting, well whose fault is that?"  
  
"But how can I control my own mind when society is the one controlling the experiences I go through?" Dib countered. "Society's the reason I have to keep fighting Zim, the reason I'm despised at skool and the reason my father's never home! I'm a product of society and its influence on the people around me, so how can I control my own mind in entirety?"  
  
After walking a narrow corridor for so long, a door to Dib's left suddenly crept into view, and his shadow guide hovered near it, indicating that this was indeed the place Zim wanted him to be.  
  
"You claim to be the product of a flawed society," the shadow teased, forming a crude hand and twisting the knob of the door open as he talked. "You sound as if you've lost your faith in society, yet you spend your life trying to save it. Why do you fight so hard each day to save something that you have no faith in? Deep down, you know it's only a façade. Your heart has already condemned your people for their cruelty, and that is why you've allowed him to rule in your place."  
  
"Allowed who to rule in my place?" Dib pestered, although the shadow was already trying to shove him into the room. "You mean here? I've allowed someone to take my place as ruler of my subconscious? Who? That's insane!"  
  
The shadow ignored him and with a quick shove, forced Dib into the room and locked the door behind him. Dib pounded against the door but the shadow had already begun to slink away into the darkness.  
  
"Wait!" he cried. "What do you mean? Who's the ruler here? Who?"  
  
The shadow was already out of eyesight before Dib could even finish his sentence. He leaned his head against the cool glass of the window built into the door, not believing his luck in this thankless dimension.

Just as he was about to give up all hope for solving at least one mystery in this warped place, he heard the same frightful whisper of his escort shadow ring around his ears.  
  
"Lord Zim is master of this dimension," it breathed, using its disembodied form to tease the big headed prisoner of his own mind. "Zim controls this world. You've lost everything to him."  
  
"What?"  
  
Dib raced around the room, looking for the cowardly owner of the voice that taunted him, but nothing appeared.  
  
"You're lying!" he shouted angrily. "I've had enough of these lies! I'd never let Zim get away with his mission! Especially when it involves my mind! This is so not my mind! You're lying!"  
  
When he got no further response from the taunting shadow, he sighed and leaned against the locked door in frustration. His room was bland, devoid of any technology that could aid in his escape. All that there was in the cold room was a single bed, desk and chair. A book lay closed on the desk, red ribbon sticking out of the end as a book mark.  
  
Realizing that there was nothing else to do, Dib fell onto the bed to wait until Zim decided to return.  
  
Wait.

He sat up suddenly, realizing that there _was_ more to do than just wait around for Zim. Giving up wasn't his style, in fact it was the reason he doubted anything that the now gone shadow said. It wasn't like him to just give up control to anyone, especially Zim!

So what if this was a foreign place with new and awkward surprises around every corner? When had that stopped him before? He'd been in moose dimensions, his own imagination and outer space in Zim's control, but when had he ever given up? Never! Why would he just give up now in this phony place that tried to pass itself off as his own mind? The depressed atmosphere of this world must have gotten to him.

He had to keep up his tireless optimism. It was the only thing he had to cling to in this upside down place.  
  
Okay, so if he was going to take charge, how was he planning on doing so? He didn't have his laptop, or a way out, or even a minor knowledge of the schematics of Zim's new domain. What did he have? Nothing...except his mind. That was it!

He'd seen the Matrix enough times to realize that if this was his own mind, surely he could warp the scenery around him. This was his mind and if Zim could change his self-projected image, then obviously Dib had to be able to as well...right?  
  
He tried his best to focus his mind on opening the door, on exploding the lock, on doing something as long as it furthered his cause of escaping and getting some answers. He stretched out his hand dramatically, remembering the time Zim had given him the dream of having super powers to use against the alien. How cool would it be to have powers of any kind now?  
  
He stayed that way for at least ten minutes, before he realized that nothing was happening. He must be doing something wrong. What had the movie said? Something about realizing the falseness of the world around him? What did that mean? This was hopeless!  
  
Okay so maybe he'd been wrong to base his escape plan on a movie, but what else did he have? He was Dib! He had to have some kind of plan!  
  
He was just on the verge of beginning to pace and talk to himself, when his eye caught the book lying on the desk. It was lying there too innocently for it not to have been placed. That book had to be some part of Zim's plan, why else would he leave it there?  
  
Dib reached for the book, noticing it's strange title with strange curiosity. The Leviathan.

Was this some kind of joke? What the hell did it all mean anyway? What was with the constant references to some sea creature and why did it terrify Zim so badly? And if he was so afraid of Leviathan, then why would he keep a book with a title like that for Dib to find? That stupid Irken was teasing him, Dib just knew it. Still, what other choice did he have than to read the book? It might just be the thing he was looking for.  
  
He curiously opened the book to the page the bookmark marked, and found a passage highlighted and underlined. His words skimmed over the difficult words and absorbed the message of the highlighted passage.  
  
 _And therefore if any two men desire the same thing, which neverthelesse they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their End, endeavor to destroy, or subdue one an other. And from hence it comes to passe, that where an Invader hath no more to feare than an other mans single power; if one plant, sow, build or possesse a convenient Seat, others may probably be expected to come prepared with forces united, to dispossesse, and deprive him not only of fruit of his labour, but also of his life, or liberty. And the Invader again is in the like danger of another._  
  
Invader? What did that mean? And who had highlighted this passage anyway? The word Invader obviously referred to Zim, but why would Zim admit to his enemy through this book about the emptiness and dangers of being an Invader?

It didn't make any sense to the boy. Was Zim trying to tell him something, was this his enemy's vague answer to one of the mysteries of this haunted place? Well the normally blunt Zim wasn't being too obvious and it was driving Dib up the wall. Would something please just make sense? Please?  
  
Through some force stronger than his own will, Dib found his eyes closing and his thoughts begin to cease their neurotic quest for truth, turning to simpler, lighter matters. He was falling asleep, and as groggy as he may have been, the normally simple process of drifting to sleep astounded him. How was it possible to fall asleep within a dream? Could one really fall asleep within one's own mind?  
  
Dib supposed it was possible; after all, he barely even knew this odd place that passed itself off as his subconscious mind. He had been dormant in within his mind for what seemed like years, which was apparently long enough for Zim to take over in his absence.  
  
How did someone take over another person's subconscious anyway? It had to be fine for him to fall asleep here in his mind, after all, it wasn't as if he were needed for anything important. Apparently Zim called the shots here in this twisted world. Who was he to intrude on Zim's many duties?  
  
No, he decided, this couldn't be his mind. Everything was far too dull and weary; there was absolutely no sign of life or joy. Sure his life had some problems, but where in this world was his fierce determination? Where was his alter ego and just how had Zim been allowed to rule a place that should have been Dib's? No, it just didn't make sense.  
  
He would never surrender to Zim. If this was truly his mind, then there had to be some resistance somewhere. There just had to be!  
  
Still, he seemed to be the only one to mind Zim's leadership in this desolate place. The few souls he had seen had actually been pretty contented with life under Zim's rule, which Dib found odd. Could this mean something after all?  
  
He had never been much for psychology, and had shut out his dad's lectures on it out many times, but now he was beginning to regret his hastiness. Maybe this was his mind after all; maybe these were his greatest fears projected into a reality. Because really, which was more frightening: a world under a cruel Zim, or a world under a mysterious, yet oddly benevolent Zim? Maybe his greatest fears weren't of enslavement after all. A world under a wrathful Zim would finally see the truth about Zim, and thank Dib for his tireless efforts against the Invader, which is what Dib had always wanted. The option of a benevolent ruler under which he didn't get to play either the hero or the martyr and people still thought him crazy for hating Zim, despite knowing the truth...well that scenario terrified him. In that scenario, humanity would be beyond hope or redemption, scorning their would be savior and embracing enslavement.  
  
Who was Dib trying to kid? He flopped back onto the bed in tired frustration, wishing just to be out of this place.

He was tired, too tired to deal with this constant mystery. Sleeping now wouldn't be surrendering to Zim's plan, it'd be relief. Yeah. Relief from the craziness of this accursed place. Maybe, just maybe, when he woke up he'd be home, back on the floor of Ms. Bitters' classroom, back with good old insane and predictable Zim.

It was a beautiful thought anyway.

* * *


	5. Chapter 5

* * *

  
Leviathan the Elusive Serpent--  
Leviathan the Twisting Serpent;  
He will slay the Dragon of the sea  
-Isaiah 27:1

* * *

It was cold. Dib couldn't recognize any other sensation than the cold. The cold nipped at his skin, causing the tiny hairs on the back of his neck to rise. A shiver ran down his spine, and he wrapped his arms around himself in a vain attempt to warm himself.  
  
It was light in this place, almost to the point of being blinding. It was a nice contrast to the dark, eerie world he had just come from, but it still wasn't his nice, normal dimension where the people were ignorant, but in at least it was in a slightly sane way. There were no eerie shadows, or crooked buildings surrounded by broken fences here, but he still couldn't be sure as to what exactly was in this new place. The blinding light blotted out his surroundings, overwhelming his eyes and making his sense of sight worthless.  
  
For a place so bright, why was it so cold? Obviously the light wasn't from the sun, or Dib would be boiling instead of freezing, but if it wasn't the sun, then what was it? A better question was, did Dib want to know what it was? After seeing the horrors of a place supposed to be in his mind, he was rather skeptical of a place he was seeing as a result of a dream turning out to be pleasant.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
He tried out the idea of calling to whatever lurked in this sunny nightmare, though he wasn't sure he expected an answer. He waited a few moments, waiting for some sign that he wasn't alone in this place, though he was frightened of the idea of meeting the natives to this place. Would there be another Zim here to greet him too? He hoped not. He had just about enough of that Irken and his vague answers and obvious insanity. Seeing someone other than his enemy, no matter who it was, would be great.  
  
"He does get rather irritating, doesn't he?"  
  
The voice echoed across Dib's mind, and he jumped about three feet into the air upon hearing it.  
  
"Huh? Who's there?"  
  
He looked around at the light surrounding him, but no shadow that would reveal a figure could be seen. The voice that spoke to him was feminine, and supernatural. It had to be supernatural! It had spoken directly to his thoughts, or at least he was pretty sure it had. And had it read his mind? How had it known it was thinking about Zim? He hadn't been talking to himself again, had he? He'd been trying to quit that habit for awhile now.  
  
"It isn't hard to figure out that your thoughts are on him," he heard again. This time the voice almost seemed to be icy, dripping the word him in hatred. "They always were. That's how he took over, you know. He was the one thing you woke up to, the thing you fell asleep thinking of. He used your love and look at what happened! This is all your fault! Why couldn't you just stay dead?"  
  
Dib was astounded at this new information, and it took a second for him to realize exactly what this voice was accusing him of.  
  
"Hey!" he protested. "I don't know who you are, but you've got it all wrong! I hate Zim! Hate him! No love, no waking up to him or with him or near him! No!"  
  
The voice paused for a moment, then resumed once more, slightly more calm.  
  
"I see," it whispered. "I mistook you for another. My apologies. You are he, but not he. Still, this world is your fault, surely you cannot deny that? You gave up on me; gave me up for him."  
  
Dib squinted at the light surrounding him, looking for any clue of the voice's whereabouts.  
  
"Look, I'm not admitting anything here!" he insisted. "Not until you start explaining some things! Where are you anyway? Show yourself!"  
  
"Very well."  
  
The light to Dib's left dimmed slightly, as a form began to take shape. Within moments, a woman, shining as fiercely as the sun itself appeared beside him. There was no obvious characteristics to her; she was merely a shell lacking in definition just as the shadow that had led him to his room had been. She wasn't human, she was more like a dream, a dream that had to assume a rough form.  
  
"You...you're like the others," Dib gasped, looking at her in awe, surprised he hadn't gone blind yet from prolonged exposure to such light. "You're intangible, like Zim...only Zim looks different."  
  
The woman seemed to tense at the mention of Zim's name and her hands clenched at her sides.  
  
"Don't say that name!" she warned furiously. "Of course he looks different than I do! He's stronger! The only powers I have left are simple parlor tricks!" When Dib didn't reply she glowered. "Don't act so surprised, this is your fault!"  
  
"How is this my fault?" Dib demanded, caught off guard by the weirdness of the situation, but quickly regaining his confidence. "I don't even know you!"  
  
The woman chuckled harshly at this and stepped closer to Dib. Dib took a step away.  
  
"Oh, you know who I am," she insisted. "I haven't been weakened to that extent...yet. I still hold some power over you. I got rid of you before, and I can still do it again."  
  
"You...got...rid of ...me?" Dib repeated, a piece of the elusive puzzle clicking into place within his head. "You killed the me in this world, didn't you? The one Zim won't tell me about? You killed him!"  
  
"Don't say that name!" she screeched, holding her hands over her ears painfully. "You don't know the truth."  
  
Dib blinked, finally realizing just who the woman was standing before him.  
  
"You know he reacts the same way about you...Leviathan," Dib said slyly. "That's who you are, isn't it? You hate Zim, and the version of me in this world loved him, however warped I think that is. So you killed him to hurt Zim! No wonder he hates you. So he's stronger than you. What did he do, cast you out here as revenge? What do you want with me anyway?" His eyes widened in horror. "Are you going to kill me too? I don't love Zim trust me! Frankly the normal version of him is an idiot, and the one you know scares the hell out of me, so killing me wouldn't hurt him in the slightest."  
  
The woman looked mortified, yet guilty at these words and tried to step closer to Dib once more, though Dib avoided her once again.  
  
"You don't realize the truth," she protested. "It was necessary! You don't understand your importance here! You can destroy him and restore things to their rightful place. You have that power; don't let your feelings for him blind you. He isn't who you think he is!"  
  
"I don't have feelings for him!" Dib shouted once more, getting severely angry at the presumptuous being before him. "Get it through your thick skull. I don't love him! You're insane."  
  
"Even if you don't love him, you still have feelings for him, for good or bad," she insisted. "This world is broken because of your feelings, why can't you see that? You say you hate him, your other self claimed to love him. Those are two extremes, and extremes are what tear the mind apart! Love in moderation; hate in moderation as well. Your mind is splintered and it's all his fault."  
  
"I thought you said it was my fault," Dib corrected coldly, staring at the woman before him with all the coldness of the area around him. "You know, I think I do remember you. Leviathan the demon. Leviathan the liar. Between a lying demon, and a psychotic alien, who am I supposed to choose? Let's see...I choose the familiar evil. I choose Zim."  
  
The woman cringed at the name Dib pronounced and the air around them turned even colder.  
  
"Then he has already won," she sighed. "Fine. Revel in your hatred; it will only lead you down the same path your predecessor took. It will lead to your destruction."  
  
"Then I'll engulf him in shadows," a familiar voice declared from behind Dib. "Your desperation knows no bounds, does it you filthy dragon-beast? The Dib has chosen and he has chosen correctly. This time, you won't get your scaly claws into him, I'll make sure of it."  
  
Dib whirled around to see the dark Zim standing behind him, a dark aura billowing around him, sinking into the blinding light and overwhelming it inch by inch. The Leviathan woman hissed, her form already beginning to subside back into the shapeless light, her power obviously diminished by Zim's presence. He'd never admit it, but Dib was never so glad to see Zim in his life. Though he had been told he had power within him to fight off whatever the woman really was, he was as clueless on how to use it as he had been on escaping his room. Considering that he didn't want to be killed in whatever strange place this was, Zim's help was definitely welcome.  
  
"I gave you the choice, Dib," Leviathan hissed as she faded into nothingness. "Remember, I gave you the choice to save yourself."  
  
The voice and the light subsided as Zim's darkness enveloped the area, covering every area of the dimension. Dib looked down at his hands to see that a strange wispy darkness was billowing from them, that looked very much like the darkness coming from Zim.  
  
He looked back at Zim to see the alien imposter glaring at him impatiently. The Irken raised his hand and with a snap of his fingers, the now dark dimension disappeared to reveal the room Dib had fallen asleep in. He lay stretched out on his bed just as he remembered, only this time, Zim was standing by his bedside, pacing nervously.  
  
"Stupid INFERIOR human!" he bellowed. "I leave you for moments and look at the mess you make! I should have known she'd try to dig her claws into you, that HORRIBLE monster! Why all the things-"  
  
"Zim?" Dib interrupted quietly. "Thanks for saving me back there. I...I had no clue what to do."  
  
Zim paused in his ranting for a moment, looked at Dib and sighed.  
  
"I had to," he conceded. "It was the least I could do after...after letting her destroy you once."  
  
The reminder of the previous Dib chilled the current Dib out greatly.  
  
"Look, um, Zim?" he started nervously. "About you and the other me...I, uh, don't share his...um, interests and-"  
  
"Silence yourself, Dib-beast," Zim ordered tiredly. "I could care less about your feelings. You're not the Dib-creature I knew, and I don't expect you to be. Replacing the lost Dib is of no concern to me, as he has left me a greater enemy to contend with in his wake. All I ask of you is your co-operation and nothing more."  
  
Zim got the haunted, eerie look in his eyes again, the same look that Dib had seen in them before. Was the sadness within this Zim because of losing Dib? It couldn't be. Maybe Dib was just used to the good old egotistical insane Zim, but the idea of Zim grieving over losing Dib's constant annoyance just seemed...off. There had to be more to this story, but did Dib really want to know about it? Not really. He just wanted to go home, back to saving the world, back to the life that had created the dark dimension he was stuck in. Back where there were no demons, no shadows and no riddles. If he ever returned, he vowed never to take Zim's idiotically simple plans for granted again.  
  
"Then you have my co-operation," Dib promised, holding out his hand reluctantly. "Get me home and I'll do all that I can to help you."  
  
Zim grabbed his hand, a deviously shady smile on his face that Dib didn't trust for a minute. Still it was better than the alternative. Beggars couldn't be choosers.  
  
"Deal."

* * *

 


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

_Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow_   
_No tomorrow_   
_No tomorrow_   
_And I find it kind of funny_   
_I find it kind of sad_   
_The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had_   
_-"Mad, Mad World"_

* * *

Dib looked at the shadowy Irken standing in front of him for a moment, wondering just how he had justified trusting such a creature. Oh well, it was better than the alternative...right?

"So how do you think I can get out of here?" Dib asked hopefully, looking at the irritated Irken ruler of this warped place. "You're the supposed ruler of this place, can't you just open up a portal and send me home?"

The shadowy Irken glowered at the boy as if he couldn't believe he'd ask such a stupid question.

"Can you?" he replied icily. "Does the real Zim have super powers? Why would I have the ability to magically teleport you places? Don't you think I'd have sent you home hours ago if I thought I could? Do you think I like you being here?"

"I don't know," Dib countered, frustration beginning to mount within him. "I bet you'd just love for me to leave here so you can go back to ruling my mind. This is my mind! Mine! If anyone should be leaving, it's you!"

Zim opened his mouth to reply with something cold and bitter, but stopped suddenly. Dib wasn't sure what exactly had stopped the imposter Irken until Zim hid his hands behind his back suspiciously.

His hands! From what Dib could briefly see before the appendages were thrust into hiding, they were no longer the ashy gray they had been before. No longer was there swirling darkness trailing from them, instead they appeared to be faded and washed out. This new discovery excited Dib immensely. Finally! Some clue as to just what he could do in this world!

"You're afraid of me, aren't you?" Dib asked gleefully as Zim backed away, still holding his hands out of Dib's view. "I don't control the world here, do I? I don't move objects, or break walls, I choose. That's the secret! My power is choice! I choose who designs my world for me. That's your problem with Leviathan isn't it? It isn't that she killed the Dib you loved, but rather that she took away your pawn! Dib loved you and that was what threw the balance in your favor. This isn't about me, this is about some power struggle between you and some weird dragon! You're using me!"

"And you're using me," Zim shot back, beginning to recover from the injury of hearing his enemy's name used so casually. "You need to get out of this world, you need protecting and I provide that for you. You chose me, just as the other you did before. I'm the lesser of the two evils, the familiar evil. Look at the good I've done for this world! There is no hunger, no suffering. All the inhabitants love me as their ruler. All she would do is destroy; I rule this world. Ruling implies care, and duty and sacrifice. And if I really did have a way to send you back to wherever you came from, I would do it in a second, to ensure your safety. Without you, this world would crumble, and we need you as much as you need us."

Dib gave the alien a skeptical look, not fully believing a word of what the alien said. True, the inhabitants of this world needed him to survive, but how much did he need them? If he killed both Zim and the leviathan in this world, would the consequences really be so dire in his own conscious world? Would he be the same person? Would killing them be the key to leaving this place? He still had so few answers to go on, but at least now he held some power over his captor/ally. All he had to do was push Zim away from his thoughts and the Irken imposter was at his mercy.

"Don't do it," Zim warned, seeing the look on Dib's face. "Don't trust her. Think about your stupidity for a moment. Shifting power from me shifts it to her. That's the rule, that's how everything works. It can't be any other way. It's either me or her, so choose your alliances properly."

Damn. There went his plan. How could he balance this out? In a way that eerie woman had been right; this world was indeed splintered by his emotions. With every surge of hatred or respect, the see saw of power dipped to one side, leaving Dib at the mercy of two insane creatures. How could he hold power over Zim if by rejecting him, he himself was thrown under another's power? This sucked.

"Fine," Dib conceded, noting that Zim felt confident to reveal his now normal hands again. "We had an alliance, so let's honor that. I'll try to control my emotions and you work on figuring out a way home for me. I can handle that."

"Me too."

"So, let's put our heads together and think about this," Dib began, trying to remain optimistic. He always had such an easy time choking down his fears in the real world and remaining as optimistic as he could, but here...well optimism was a difficult thing to maintain in this world.

"This is your mind," Zim replied in a bored tone. "You figure out a way to escape here, and I'll try my best to make it possible using the powers I have here."

This answer didn't seem to please Dib in the slightest, and he watched the irritating Irken smirk at Dib's annoyance.

"Well, what is this place, Zim?" Dib wondered. "To figure a way out, I should at least figure out where I am first. Was this place always like this? Didn't you mention Tabula Rasa before? That would mean that this place was empty to begin with when I was born and began to fill up whenever I experienced something new in life. Was my subconscious born with me, or did I create this place?"

Zim scoffed at the boy's presumptions and sat reluctantly beside him on the bed, though a great many feet apart.

"Some things are born into existence," Zim replied snidely, "and some are damned into existence. I'll leave it to you to figure out which category this place falls into."

"I damned this place into being?" Dib repeated, trying to grasp the idea. "What does that mean exactly?"

"It means that when you look in the mirror, you don't like what you see," Zim clarified. "You're tormented within yourself and you can't work it out within your own conscious thoughts. So instead of leaving you in split torment, your mind split into two sides...me and...her." He looked disgusted even mentioning the idea of his adversary. "Maybe you can only leave after sorting out the conflict in your mind. It's not unheard of."

"You've heard of it before?" Dib was doubtful of there being a similar situation, but he was curious as to what Zim was alluding to. "When?"

"All the time," Zim answered pensively. "It happens every day. There's always a catalyst for such a process, like an accident or a sickness, or in your case, your massive head getting exposed to strange scientific energy. In some people it results in a coma, in some fainting. It depends on the catalyst and the extent of damage it did to your physical body to make it subject itself to the mind. Some people wake up to serious injury, but free of the conflict within themselves, while others don't wake up at all. A child faints after feeling woozy in class one day and no one is able to revive them. The body dies, and people wonder why, though the mind of the child is still lingering in their own created world, trying to solve the conflict that is choking their soul."

"Wait, _what_?" Dib froze where he was at these words. "I could die in the real world and wake up from this world dead?"

Zim shrugged.

"Well I don't know if you'd _wake_ up dead," he replied as casually as if they were discussing the weather. "To wake up you'd need a living body, which you may not have. I guess you'd be stuck somewhere in an after life or something. Maybe."

"Maybe?" Dib was genuinely frightened by this point. " _Maybe?_ This is my life here! I'm just a kid! I have a life and a family and a world that needs saving! I can't die!"

"Yeah you can. The body needs a soul to live. I guess if maybe they put you on life support and-"

"Stop it!" Dib screeched, unable to hear talk of death and life support as something that could be happening soon to him. "I'll find a way out of this place before that happens! I know I will. The world depends on me finding a way out of here."

"Well then you'd better work on finding out the answer to your conflict," Zim suggested in a voice that clearly was teasing him. "Tick tock, I'm sure your time is running out."

Dib gave his shadowy companion a weary look; much like the ones he often gave the regular Zim.

"You know that's not helping."

Zim shrugged as if he could care less about how helpful he was to the boy. Somehow, Dib didn't doubt that Zim sincerely didn't care what happened to him, so long as Zim retained his control on this world. In that way, this mirror version of Zim definitely reflected the original. Dib often wondered if Zim ever thought about another living creature other than himself. It was mind boggling that a version of himself, even a severely splintered one, could fall for an egomaniac like Zim. Dib knew the alien had feelings and emotions, he didn't doubt that; what he did doubt was Zim having feelings about someone that wasn't either himself or his mission.

"So what is my conflict?" Dib pondered, drawing a sigh from Zim.

"That's something that you'll have to work out on your own," he answered briskly, realizing that now that he had Dib's allegiances again that there really wasn't a point to him being near the boy. It wasn't as if he were enjoying the boy's company. No, seeing the form of his former love only kindled the fires of hatred within him. Each time he saw Dib, he saw his predecessor in his amber eyes, and saw the pain of losing to that scaly demon. Dib was just another reminder of his daily battle, and of pain. As long as he kept Dib away from his adversary, then his mission would be a success.

"Something I have to work out on my own," Dib repeated, ignoring the fact that Zim was essentially brushing him off. He needed someone to sound ideas off of, and even Zim was better than nothing...especially when his life was on the line. "Maybe my life really is sad. Maybe my father really doesn't love me and my sister really would rather see me dead before walking near me. Could that be it? No, that seems too obvious. It has to be something deeper. But what?"

"What would I know about your mind?" Zim replied huffily. "I only rule one part of it and even then your giant head confuses even me, ZIM, at times."

"My head's not big," Dib chided absently, his thoughts still on this mystery. "I should know this. This is my problem, my mind...why don't I know this?"

Zim shrugged, looking longingly at the door, wishing that he could think of a brilliant way of leaving this conversation without angering Dib enough that his affections and loyalties would sway out of his control.

"The mind hides and buries things it doesn't want to realize," he offered tiredly. "You'll find the answer somewhere in that enormous head."

Dib ignored the repeated insult about his head and sighed softly.

"You said my mind split in two," he asked, his thoughts swirling together, producing nothing too productive.

"Yup. The stress of the inner conflict tore it into two separate identities. Try to keep up Dib-stink."

"Two identities. Two insane identities. Two monsters," Dib reasoned. "Why such weird forms? A sea monster and an alien menace, all offense intended to present company. Why monsters?"

Zim glowered a little, but bit a scathing remark back for fear of upsetting Dib and losing his affections. Besides, this idle banter oddly reminded him of another, just as crazy Dib he once knew.

"One person's monster is another person's god," he teased. "Check the mythology, its all there. Monsters are variable in definition. They're just something created by the imagination. Monsters scare people into believing lies, of following difficult paths and of living in fear. They are a form of control, and nothing more."

"The lesser of two evils," Dib repeated, as if he hadn't even heard Zim. "The lesser of two monsters...but what does it all mean? Is it a literal monster, or a symbolic one? What if it's interpreted as something like an emotion? Emotions can be monstrous like greed, jealously...."

He trailed off, seeing the look on Zim's face. Fear. Guilt. But why?

"Hubris," Zim whispered, though barely above a whisper.

Immediately Dib's thoughts jumped to the oddly placed tower in the yard of Xanadu. The Tower Hubris!

"That could be it!" he exclaimed, jolting Zim from whatever mood he had gotten into. "What does that mean anyway? It sounds familiar but kind of hazy."

Zim refused to look at the Dib, instead choosing to focus intently at the nearby wall.

"A challenge to the gods."

Dib looked expectantly at Zim, waiting for a further explanation, but none came. The alien's head was bowed slightly as if remembering a particularly painful memory that he could never be rid of.

"And?"

There was no reply. Instead, the Invader rose from the bed he was sitting on and departed from the room without saying a word. Dib frowned, and tried exercising his thin power over the alien, shifting all of his allegiance to someone that wasn't Zim, presumably Leviathan if Zim was to be believed. Still Zim didn't return to plead for Dib's alliances. So whatever thought process it was that Dib had tapped into, it had hit a nerve within the alien imposter and one deep enough for him to leave without a second thought about his precious power. Odd.

So Hubris was the key. Yes, it had to be. But what was it? A challenge to the gods? That was...vague. His thoughts dwelled on the beautiful, yet scarred tower in the yard of Xanadu, and recalled faintly Zim's awkwardness when asked about it. Hubris. Well, things were definitely getting interesting around here, and Dib was never one to sit around and let things clear up on their own. He was a paranormal investigator and spying and sneaking were his strong points. He'd get to the bottom of this one way or another. It seemed that even fate seemed to be smiling on him this day as Zim had left the door to his room wide open, leaving that mysterious tower wide open for some good ol' Dib style stalking. With a cautious look over his shoulder for any floating watchmen, Dib crept out of the door with every intention of sneaking into the forbidden tower. He was finally going to get some answers.

* * *


	7. Chapter 7

* * *

_Poor youth! who scarcely dar'st lift up thine eyes--_  
 _The stream will soon renew its smoothness, soon_  
 _The visions will return! And lo, he stays,_  
 _And soon the fragments dim of lovely forms_  
 _Come trembling back, unite, and now once more_  
 _The pool becomes a mirror._  
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge

* * *

The grounds were dark as Dib tread slowly through them in search of this mysterious tower. His escape had been almost too easy. No guards, or alarms or anything Zim might normally have set up in a base were absent from Xanadu. Dib figured it was probably the result of him throwing off Zim's power by channeling his devotion to Leviathan, which was handy. He didn't care why he had escaped; the important thing was that he had somehow managed to find his way out of the weird castle undetected. Now all he had to do was avoid the eerie dragon that he gave power to and he'd be set.

The yard outside the castle was eerily quiet, almost as silent as a graveyard. A graveyard...that was what this place was, really. There to his right lay the ruins of Zim's old familiar base, standing alone as a monument to the many times he had thwarted Zim's plans. It was a place he knew almost as well as his own house, and there it was in ruins before him.

How had Zim just thrown it aside? Surely the Invader was homesick for some touch of his own people, as the boy had seen no signs of Irken equipment anywhere within the palace that was Xanadu. But this wasn't the real Zim, now was it?

This wasn't his enemy he was dealing with, the one he laughed at and humiliated in front of their classmates. This was an even greater enemy, for in some fractured way, this Zim was a version of himself. He was fighting against his own mind, which was nothing like fighting against the incompetent Zim. This was the fight of his life, and if the shadowy Zim could be believed, it was also the fight for his life. He had to figure this out! He was running out of time.

There!

The junior paranormal investigator broke out into a run at the sight of the tower he had seen so distantly before. It really was beautiful to look at, despite the ugly vines that covered it and the wear the years of neglect had taken on it. Gingerly, he laid a questioning hand on it, running his fingers across the once smooth marble. His fingers brushed against the vines and hit the edge of a small plaque embedded into the marble. With great curiosity, he cleared the vines away, revealing a single, and rather predictable word engraved into the plaque.

"Hubris," he whispered in awe, gazing up at the forgotten tower. "This is it. This is the end."

He turned his gaze to the left side of the tower, finding a small, unsealed passageway that would allow him to enter the tower that Zim seemed to be adamant that he never see. A quick glance assured him that the stairs indeed looked stable to walk on. They ascended in a spiral design, which from where Dib was standing, appeared to be pretty secure. There was only one way to find out....

He took a small step onto the bottom step, and fell flat on his face, unprepared for the sensations that overwhelmed him. He grabbed onto a step higher up to study himself and was filled with a sudden rush of pain.

The stairway, luckily didn't extend very high, but from what Dib could gather, this was going to be the longest flight of stairs he ever climbed. Each step brought with it severe pain from a rush of charged emotions that seemed to intensify with each bit of physical contact he made with the stairs. It didn't make sense to him, but he immediately knew the cause of his pain, and the reason excited him. He was getting closer to where he had to be! Somehow, by climbing this tower, he was forcing the two severed pieces of his mind back towards each other and whatever the conflict that had divided his mind in the first place was, it was repelling the two pieces like magnets. That was why Zim had wanted him nowhere near the place; it would end his game for power with Leviathan and dethrone him. Well Dib had just about enough of this place, alliances with Zim be damned! He wanted out before his body was torn apart by this trauma and he ended up trapped here.

Summoning all of his strength, Dib struggled to his feet, ignoring the blood that was now trickling from his nose as his mind struggled against him, and did the only thing he could do in this world. He began to climb.

* * *

Meanwhile....

"GIR!"

The voice of Zim echoed through the empty hallway, yet the little robot dog failed to notice. He was too busy dancing around the hall, trying to jump up to peer into classroom windows.

"GIR! Cease your madness immediately!"

The dog finally stopped and peered up at the angry face of his master.

"Yes?"

Zim sighed and stared deeply at his robot slave, trying to impress upon him the importance of listening. How would he ever conquer this stinking planet if his own servant refused to obey his every command?

"GIR, I couldn't help but notice that you've quit your job of OBEYING me, ZIM! What did I just tell you to do?"

The little robotic dog paused for a moment, pondering the question seriously.

"Ummmm....take the Dib human annnndddd...."

"And?" Zim glowered at his SIR unit intensely, though he doubted GIR even noticed. "Then what?"

The cute robot struggled to remember exactly what his master had told him, straining with remembrance, but coming up short. Still, he hated when his master gave him that disapproving look so he decided to improvise.

"Um....give him a hug?"

Zim looked into those adorable eyes that captivated the humans so much and sighed helplessly. This was hopeless.

"No GIR," he chided, staring sternly at the robot. "You're supposed to be dragging him to the nurse's office for inspection so that I, Zim, can claim his desk for my own to further observe all the...stuff that normal Earth filthies do. The location of the Dib-worm is crucial to our mission, GIR. Where is he?"

The Irken Invader looked down the hallway, craning his neck to see better where exactly the irritating robot had placed his nemesis. He was almost tempted to horribly mutate or deform Dib while he was unconscious, but he fought the temptation valiantly. If the nurse-human were to examine him and find evidence of alien tampering, his mission could be exposed, and that was never good.

Curse that Dib and his large head. Maybe he would stay unconscious forever...yes. He'd have trouble ruining Zim's glorious plans when he couldn't even open his eyes. Still...he hated the thought of Dib being out of commission because of some mistake and not of something he'd created. As much as he regretted thinking it, he almost wished that the Dib would awaken, just so that Zim could finish him off himself. Beating the Dib was something that Dib could not rob Zim of...the alien wouldn't allow it. After all he'd suffered at the boy's hands, to just let him fade into oblivion without taking his proper revenge just seemed so unfair.

Oh well. He'd plan out the Dib's demise later. First he had to locate him before Ms. Bitters decided to check in on him at the nurse's office.

He looked at GIR expectantly, who looked vacantly back at his master.

"I made you a card!" he proclaimed, popping a storage chamber in his head open and pulling out a coupon for half priced kitty treats.

Zim grimaced. There was never a dull moment with that robot.

"No card, GIR," he coaxed irritably. "Sometimes I have to wonder just how much this FILTHY world has corroded your superior programming. Now, where's the Dib?"

GIR's eyes looked distantly to the left and he smiled innocently.

"Burritos?"

Realizing that GIR was no help at all, Zim sighed and pushed past his robot slave angrily. He'd just have to find Dib himself. How hard could it be? The robot had only been left unattended for a few minutes in an empty hallway, how many places could GIR have hidden him? Besides, the size of Dib's head alone should give the unconscious boy away.

Zim started down the hallway angrily, peering in half-full classrooms or stinky janitor closets for where GIR had managed to hide the human. If Ms. Bitters called down to the nurse's office and found that the Dib was not there...well whatever happened, he only knew that it wouldn't be good.

"Dib?"

He called his nemesis' name quietly, in the rare chance that Dib was actually conscious and able to hear him. When there was no reply, the alien turned around and scowled at his robotic dog.

"This is all your fault, GIR! You're bad."

The little dog looked sad for a moment, then after growing bored of feeling guilty, he ran screaming down the hall to passionately embrace a fire extinguisher.

"Ugh...."

Despite the fact that he had no visible ears, Zim picked up on the faint cry immediately through his finely tuned Invader senses. It had come...that way. Left!

Thrashing sounded down the hallway, and as Zim turned the corner, he made another mental note to check GIR's systems. He had found Dib at long last. The dog had left the human boy wedged in between two recycling bins, his enormous head toppled over into one of the bins.

Wincing, Zim fished his enemy out of the sea of poop soda cans he was in, the entire time thinking about the good of his mission. Gah. The Dib was even slimier than usual now that he was covered in soda slime. The boy was still unconscious, which the alien found odd. Surely the boy would have awakened by now?

Though he was repulsed in the extreme about what he was about to do, his curiosity overwhelmed him and carefully making sure not to touch the child as much as he could, he pried one of Dib's eyes open. His eyes were glassy, and the amber that usually steeled itself against Zim was faded. The eye was flickering rapidly, much like eyes did while the human body slept.

Was the Dib sleeping? _Sleeping_? When he could be opposing ZIM? The alien's ego wouldn't allow for such a thought. The boy spent every waking hour and every waking thought on Zim, which made the alien worry a little. To be unconscious for this long must mean that something must be terribly wrong within the boy. Where was his fight now? Where had his determination gone?

Seeing his rival in such a hideously weak state sickened Zim on some deep level. This was his rival; the rival of ZIM! This was the boy that ruined his plans every time (except for the times when his plans ruined themselves, of course), the boy that matched Zim blow for blow. Though he'd never be the equal of the GREAT and GLORIOUS ZIM, he was close, and seeing the Dib in such a frail state reminded the alien just how fragile life could be. Sure he wasn't really human, but that only meant more danger for him! There were germs, or riots or paranormal scientists to fear, and seeing just how easily Dib succumbed to his weaknesses, doubled Zim's paranoia of his own. When he dropped Dib off at the nurse's office, he'd have to swipe an antibacterial wipe from the desk and kill any germs that may be on him.

The nurse's office....

He glanced up at a nearby clock placed in the hall to motivate students to get to class on time. He'd been searching for Dib for almost twenty minutes! Unless Ms. Bitters was really caught up in one of her doom lectures, he'd suffer for sure. If only he could fight back against such stupid rules with his superiority, but no, he had to suffer like all the other children. It was for the good of the mission to be enslaved by the hideous pig smellies; only in this way could he turn around and enslave them!

For the good of the mission....

With that thought, he grabbed a hold of Dib's shoulders and struggled to drag him down the hallway. The human was even heavier while unconscious, which was a real disadvantage to Zim, since he already weighed less than Dib when the human was conscious. He grunted and pulled and scowled to no avail. Where was his wretched robot slave when he needed him?

A nearby classroom door opened, revealing Gaz, who was as usual, ignoring the world as she tapped the buttons on her Game Slave furiously.

"Dib-sister?"

Zim's startled mention of her name caught Gaz's attention and she briefly looked up from her game to see Zim dragging her unconscious brother, who happened to dripping with spilled soda and smelled like a moldy rug. This odd scenario warranted an opening of one of her eyes, though she quickly shrugged the scene off and resumed her game playing as she presumably headed for the bathroom.

"I don't even _want_ to know."

Zim watched Gaz disappear down the hall in confusion. Did she not even care that her brother was injured? Wasn't that the job of normal sister units, to care? The Earth was a much more confusing place than he had originally thought.

Dib moaned again from the floor as his body began to twitch again. Zim stared in amazement as the Dib human convulsed and twitched like he was on the verge of death, and then settled down to the deathly still pose he had been in when Zim had found him. That was...odd.

So was that outburst Dib fighting to regain consciousness, or the early stages of death in humans? Placing a gloved hand on the human's soda covered face, he was surprised at how cool to the touch the human actually was. His skin, despite being soda covered, was also quite clammy. This development intrigued the Invader, though not enough to make him not regret having touched the filthy child. Dib's body shivered in all its sickly humanity. Whatever was going on within Dib's stupid head was destroying him, far more effectively than any of Zim's plans ever could. The Dib's fate was beyond any human nurse's care, even Zim could see that. Whatever this was would work itself out in its own time and the outcome would be based on Dib's own determination alone.

Hearing GIR giggle around a corner, the alien sighed and continued to drag his nemesis reluctantly towards the nurse's office. With any luck he could get GIR to do this for him again, though he'd have to keep a stern eye on him this time. Humans and their filthy problems. It was one thing that Zim would definitely not miss once the Earth was in his control.

* * *

 


	8. Chapter 8

* * *

_Have you been half asleep and have you heard voices?_   
_I've heard them calling my name._   
_Is this the sweet sound that called the young sailors._   
_The voice might be one and the same._   
_I've heard it too many times to ignore it._   
_It's something that I'm supposed to be._   
_Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection._   
_The lovers, the dreamers and me_

\- _The Rainbow Connection_

* * *

Dib pulled his tired body up the next few stairs slowly. He was making pretty good time now that the pain had resided. It was still there aching within his giant head as his mind tried to glue itself back to together, but he was almost beginning to get used to it. At least most of the bleeding had stopped. It was a struggle to move up each new stair, but somehow he was managing. He had to manage after all. His life hung in the balance and his life couldn't just be thrown away. That would mean victory for Zim and doom for the Earth he loved so dearly.

He groaned as he ascended the next step, though it was getting easier to climb the more he climbed. Though it defied all reasoning, a wind blew through the tower, both cooling Dib down slightly, and sending a piece of paper flying towards his face. Dib grabbed the paper with a moan, wanting to find out the clue that the paper held, but still fearing to read it. It had come from this accursed dimension after all, and never turned out to be good.

With a sigh, he steeled himself for the worst and began to read. Just like the other note he'd gotten what seemed so long ago, it was in his own handwriting, implying that his other self in this world had written it before he was killed.

_But could youth last, and love still breed,_  
_Had joys no date, nor age no need,_  
_Then these delights my mind might move  
_ _To live with thee and be thy love_

_Though someone far more talented than I am wrote these words, and in another time period entirely, they pretty much sum up my feelings for Zim. It's insane what I feel for him, even though he's got to be the most infuriating person I've ever met. He's rude, insensitive, almost entirely insane, but he's...I don't know. Special somehow. Still...no matter how special he is, I can't love him, just like the poem suggests. Surely out of all the types of love I meet, I meet the darkest. Deep within my soul, I am conflicted with flames of passion, burning deeply against the flames of love. And yet I would cast the mocking stars from their seats above in defiance to Fate. Let this one love be the last love, the true love of my soul. I watch the others play their games, as they dance around the flames I live in. What would it be like to be them, to join in their fun and never be alone? Yet if I were to leave my flames to join them, I would always carry with me the memories of the flames and the loneliness of the never forgotten fires would consume me in the end. The knowledge, the accursed knowledge would burn my very soul to forget. I hold the key within me. Within me is the final, the only star I can not bring myself to destroy. It consumes me and yet I cannot bring myself to destroy it. My soul is burning...does this mean I love him? Or do I love only the thought of him?_

Dib stared at the paper long after having read it, not believing, or understanding a word of it. This was the answer he'd been waiting for? This? This scrap of paper didn't even make sense! How had _this_ splintered his mind? Sure the Dib who had written it had been in pain, or turmoil while writing it, that was obvious enough, but this was hardly the thing to break a mind apart over. There had to be more to this mystery, but what?

Granted, he was being pretty optimistic to think that his problems could all be solved only half way up these infernal stairs. It was unrealistic to have all the answers he needed when he was only this far along. But at this rate....He wiped his bleeding nose with the sleeve of his trench coat sullenly. He had to hurry this process along. If all this strain was harming his mental self, he could only imagine the strain on his physical self. Sure he didn't know the exact relationship his actions here had on the him in the real, conscious world, but he could only guess that it wasn't good whatever it was.

Crumpling up the worthless paper, he threw it down the stairs angrily and got a good grip on the next stair, ignoring the bursts of pain that shot through him as he did so. No answers would be here to greet him on these thankless stairs; he had to persevere despite how much it hurt. The world needed him to survive! Zim had to be stopped! He had humanity depending on his ability to wake up; he just couldn't screw this up!

"I thought your voice was stupid enough, now I can see that I was wrong. Your thoughts are far stupider."

"Huh?" The voice was familiar, in fact, Dib could recognize it anywhere. It was his sister! But what was Gaz doing here, locked in a tower within his mind? "Gaz?"

He looked around but saw no trace of his scary sister anywhere around him. It was just him and the stairs.

"Okay...that was a weird thing to have happen."

Shrugging, he chalked the experience up to the merging of his fractured mind and continued his way up the stairway. Surely in all that mess, something random would pop up right? Besides, why would Gaz be in this place? This world was devoid of humanity, the only souls beside the warring monsters in his brain were those who served Zim, and those could hardly be considered actual people. Everyone and everything here lacked the definition that normal and sane members of humanity had in the outside world. It was strange how much he actually was beginning to miss his ignorant and stupid society. While they were infuriating, at least they were familiar.

His foot touched the step in front of him with enough force to step him reeling backwards. Another trap hidden in the already painful stairway!

_"Daddy? It's lunchtime and I'm hungry."_

_A small child with the cutest little bow in her hair looked up at her uninterested father with an adorably irresistible look in her eyes. It was Gaz, when she was only a small child, back when she'd actually said more than three words to her brother. She'd never really been talkative or friendly to the world, or in particular her brother, but there had been a time when she had idolized her father. Every little girl did after all; it was the normal thing to do. However, this girl's father was far from ordinary. Dib stood in the background watching the scene unravel before him, not surprised at the reaction his sister was getting._

_He'd tried many times to get his father's attention, and had given up. Their annual dinner together was something he had long since given up on, but it was something that Gaz cherished. She, despite all appearances, still had hope and that was what hurt Dib the most to see._

_His father turned his back on Gaz, giving her a quick pat on the head and disappearing into his lab never to be seen until the next time toast was to be made. Membrane never even saw the crushed look on Gaz's face, or the tiny specks of tears that formed in the girl's young eyes. This look broke Dib's young heart._

_His father could do that to him, but to Gaz? She was just a child! Sure she was only a year younger than him, but she was still his little sister and it was his job to protect her. He had to protect her; he was older and it was his duty._

_He emerged from his hiding spot in the shadows, and wrapped his arms around his sniffling sister. She stiffened at once, turning her back to him to keep her obvious tears hidden. Even as a young child, Gaz was still trying to appear colder than she was._

" _It's okay, Gaz," he assured his sister warmly. "I'm hungry too. But you know what? I have enough allowance saved up to go to Bloaty's. Do you wanna come with me?"_

_Gaz's little face lit up, though she immediately tried to suppress any happiness she felt in front of her older brother. Dib extended his hand to her and Gaz quickly grabbed it, as all young children are taught to do when venturing outside by themselves. Dib smiled reassuringly at his sister, though he was just as hurt by his father as she was._

" _It's okay Gaz," he promised. "I'll always be there to protect you."_

Dib gasped suddenly, overwhelmed by the sheer power of his memories. Where had that come from? That incident had been years ago, and Gaz had long since forgotten any emotions she might have had towards her brother. That was...random. This really was the absolute worst place to be. Every step he took either brought on a new wave of mental pain, or some other form of weirdness. Just what was wrong with this place anyway? Now there was a question. That question had led him here to this stupid tower in the first place! Just a few more stairs and then...then what? While the idea of leaving this accursed stairway was definitely appealing, the thought of what awaited him, frightened Dib immensely. What was waiting for him in this place? Even if he faced whatever lay ahead, would it still be enough to get him home?

_I'll always be there to protect you._

His long forgotten words to Gaz echoed through his mind for reasons unknown to him. This was an odd time to be sentimental about his sister. Here he was facing uncertain death and he was thinking about a memory with his sister that had happened years again.

"Get it together, Dib," he whispered to himself, amazed that even in his head he was talking to himself. "Whatever's ahead has got to be powerful and difficult. I can't let paranoia get the better of me yet! The world depends on me! The world...depends...oh who am I trying to kid?"

The idea of him being Earth's sole savior was growing a bit thin. Maybe it was the harsh emptiness of this world he was trapped in, or the fact that his brain currently felt like it had been liquefied due to stress, but it was getting exceedingly difficult to tell himself that he was the single reason the Earth was still in existence. He just couldn't be.

Maybe it was the effects of his mind fusing ever so painfully back together, but his never failing confidence was beginning to waver. Why was he the world's sole savior? Why him? Surely if he had wanted to be a dentist instead of a paranormal investigator, someone would have stopped Zim! Zim wasn't his destiny to stop; he just couldn't be!

Feeling more than a little unnerved by such thinking, Dib put aside his current thoughts and stared up at the stairs he still had to climb. He would fight Zim irregardless of what he wanted. He had to. The top of the stairs was now visible from where Dib stood. There was only three steps left, and then at the top of them a silver door. He had to reach that door, no matter how hard it was to climb these stairs. He had to!

Gingerly, he took another step up the stairwell, this time taking two steps at the same time. It almost knocked him off balance to skip over a step, but it was well worth the freedom from more mental stress. He closed his eyes, waiting for the next thing to torment him. Sure enough, there it was, almost as if it were waiting for him.

_Younger Dib stood looking out his kitchen window with his younger sister, watching the rain begin to come to a stop outside. Gaz, with both of her eyes open, pointed to something in the sky, nudging her brother as she did so._

_"What's that Dib?" she asked, staring at the sky in awe._

_Dib looked to where she was pointing and smiled._

_"That's called a rainbow, Gaz," he explained to his younger sister who was peering out the rain soaked window._

_"Rainbow?" she repeated in awe, staring at the vibrant colors that hovered in the sky just outside the window. "Why is it here? What does it do?"_

_Dib looked over his shoulder for his father's shadow. Though his father was hardly ever around, he usually had a sixth sense to appear when a scientific question like this was asked. Dib hadn't had the courage to ask his father about normal things like rainbows or clouds or the color of the sky like normal children asked their parents, because he, even at that young age, knew all that he'd get was a scientific lecture. If he really wanted to know the answers to such questions, he just looked it up in the Scientific Encyclopedia in the living room. It could practically double as his father anyway; it knew as much about science and showed the same amount of affection. Still his sister needed an answer, and he wasn't about to give her the same, cruelly boring answer he'd received._

_"What's a rainbow?" Dib repeated thoughtfully. "Well, it's a piece of magic, Gaz. Thunderstorms crash and boom and get really scary at times. Sometimes the winds and lightening get so bad that people die." Gaz cowered at this slightly, crouching under the window to hide from the thunder still booming far away from the remainder of the storm. Dib smiled at his sister's childlike fear, and gave her a quick hug to calm any fears she may still be having. "But as bad as the storms get, Gaz, they always pass. The sun will eventually come out again, and the clouds will go away. A rainbow is a promise, a sign that things will get better from then on. Whenever you see a rainbow, you know that all of the scary storm is over, and soon you can go out to play again. It's a reminder that the worst is over and it's magic."_

_"Magic?" Gaz tried the word out, while still staring at the miraculous colors dancing in the sky before her. "A rainbow is magic?"_

_Dib nodded solemnly, still hugging his sister._

_"Yep. You don't have to be afraid anymore; that's what a rainbow means. You don't have to be afraid."_

"You don't have to be afraid anymore." Dib whispered the words to himself, though he found them hard to believe. He had only been a stupid kid when he had told Gaz that, and within months she had already begun to disbelieve him, turning more and more into the hardened girl he knew today. Technically he was still just a stupid kid, but it sure didn't feel that way. He had grown so much from those days, grown so much even within the time that Zim had been there. He had grown up immensely into the solitarily defender of Earth that he prided himself on being. Sure his classmates were kids, thinking about stupid things like video games and homework, but he was different. He was Dib. He had a world to save.

Still, he was not so grown up that the memory of rainbows didn't still affect him. In fact, he wanted to sob uncontrollably just thinking about what used to be. Gaz used to be human; he used to have a friend in her. He used to believe in magic.

That was the biggest loss to him by far. Sure he still tried out curses and ancient spell books in his efforts to vanquish Zim, but his appreciation of magic was gone. The world no longer glittered with possibilities, and magic couldn't be found anywhere. There was no magic in a garden of growing flowers, nor was there magic in other people. All that Dib saw in life was ignorance, and denial. People were stupid to not see Zim for what he was, for calling him crazy, for rejecting him when they should be cheering him on. He was the good guy, and magic had failed him.

Maybe that depressing view was what had changed this world into the miserable place it was. It wasn't like this dreadful place had a speck of magic running through it anywhere. All sense of wonder and majesty had given way to the epic battle that he was trying to end in this stupid tower. All the magic had been given to Zim.

Zim....

The thought of his nemesis, both the live one and the shadow one that was lurking around his mind, snapped him back to his surroundings. Who cared about what used to be? The past was past and right now, he had a future to protect. He had to wake up to stop Zim, and he couldn't do that if he was standing around using about the random memories his mind flung out at him when it was on the verge of dying. He had to reach whatever was behind that door!

Taking a deep breath, Dib jumped over the last step and landed just before the elusive silver door. He waited once more for the onslaught of mental images to begin, but to his surprise, none came. He stared at the door in awe, immensely happy to be off those stairs. Whatever was behind this door, Dib would accept happily just so long as it wasn't another flight of stairs.

He extended his hand out to reach for the little silver handle at the side of the door, when he heard it. It was faint, but there was no denying its presence.

"The storm is over, Dib," it whispered, dancing around Dib's giant head warmly. "You protected me all those years ago, and I guess I owe you for that...Just promise that you'll never forget the rainbow."

"Gaz?"

Dib searched around him for his disembodied sister, but still could find nothing. Where was she, and why was she here? Trying brush off the eerie encounter, he reached again for the door knob, and as he turned it, the image of a little rainbow sparkled into existence just above his hand.

"You don't have to be afraid anymore. That's a promise."

Dib smiled, hoping that wherever his sister was, that she could see it. He wouldn't be afraid to face whatever he had to face. He wouldn't be afraid if even he were to die in this strange place. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door and stepped into the unknown, knowing that whatever happened, at least he'd have the memories of a happy Gaz there with him, and a promise made years ago. No matter how miserable his life got, he'd always have those there to protect him. It was something that no one could take from him. Not even Zim.


	9. Chapter 9

* * *

_There is no happiness where there is no wisdom;_  
 _No wisdom but in submission to the gods._  
 _Big words are always punished._  
\- Sophocles, _Antigone_

* * *

Preparing for the worst, Dib braced himself then looked around him. He had finally made it to the highest level of the Tower Hubris, and after facing down those accursed stairs, he was ready for anything. If there was anything more painful than having memory after memory forced to surface in your mind, with added pain each time you took a step, well then Dib was well prepared for it.

To his surprise, the mysterious tower he'd put so much hope in, was really nothing too great. In fact, it was nothing like he had been expecting. At all.

Both the walls and floors glimmered in the faded light the sole window let in. These were far from ordinary walls though. Each of them was a large mirror, reflecting the light and images in circles around the room. The floor was also unique in this way, as it too was a gigantic mirror that reflected anything that stepped in its path. The mirrored floor broke in the center of the room to make way for a circular fountain, gurgling away faintly. Water leapt from the fountain every few moments in a vertical pattern that defied all laws of water flow that Dib had ever been taught. His dad would love it here in this completely unscientific world.

Still, to an unscientific mind, this place was beautiful, far from the ugly, scarred outside of the tower that Dib had seen. It defied explanation, or description or even logic. It was a place so familiar to him, yet at the same time so undeniably foreign. It was like he had seen this place before...but when and...where?

He walked across the mirrored floor, reveling in the fact that his boots made no marks on the floor, even though he was purposely dragging them. Were these fake mirrors? Were these real mirrors and his body was just a mental projection? It was all too exciting to think about, and though he knew time was extremely limited, he longed to experiment with this place some more.

Walking closer to the sole window to get a better view of the grounds, Dib trailed a finger along the mirrored walls. His eyes still followed his footsteps on the ground, so fascinated with the mark free ground that he almost completely missed something crucially important.

A glimmer of light flashed across the wall, causing Dib to look up to see what was happening. He blinked when he saw it, rubbed his eyes and blinked again. There it was on the wall in front of him, but there was no way...it wasn't possible....How could what he was seeing be true?

He flattened his palm against the glass wall, staring in horror as the reflection in the mirror copied him. He waved, made a face, jumped up and down, all the childish things one would do to test your reflection and each time the result was the same. This was definitely his reflection facing him in the mirror. There was no other explanation for it.

Normally seeing a reflection wouldn't be a problem for Dib. In fact, he would have been worried if there hadn't been a reflection showing in these mirrors. However, this wasn't the reflection Dib was used to seeing upon waking up each morning. His scythe of hair was gone, as were his glasses and amber colored eyes. He still wore his favourite trench coat, and his same boots, shirt and entire rest of his wardrobe, but he was different. The same Dib that he saw in every other mirror was clearly absent from this mirror. This Dib wasn't Dib at all...it was Zim.

There was no denying it. There were Zim's red bug eyes where his should be, Zim's green skin instead of his, Zim's antennae replacing his hair. Zim's reflection wearing his clothes was what he saw before him. Zim's reflection followed his movements, instead of his own.

At least it was the normal Zim that Dib was used to seeing, instead of that horrible shadow version that he had been forced to deal with for the past while. Seeing the face of his normal enemy, only served to drive Dib further along his mission. He had to get out of here some how. The world needed saving from Zim; the world needed him to save it. It was his responsibility, his destiny to stop Zim, his sole purpose to-

"There you go again with the heroism."

Dib whirled around to face the familiar feminine voice, cringing as he saw Zim in the mirror do the same thing.

"Leviathan! What are you doing here? Zim said that-"

The shining woman figure looked slightly amused at Dib's assumptions.

"He said what? That I wouldn't dare show up in Xanadu? Hate to break it to you Dib, but this isn't Xanadu. Xanadu is empty, a mere shell filled with pleasantries. Xanadu is empty, that's why Zim hates it. There's no one to hear him rant, or complain. There's no one there to oppose, or argue with, or order around. There are only the shadows here to order around, and so those are whom he rules. He'd order any sentient creature around as long as the opportunity presented itself. He says he's in it for their best interests, and that humanity-or what's left of it anyway-is better off in his care, but it's always, only been about the power with him. When's the last time Zim showed concern for another being?"

Dib looked skeptical of the dragon's appearance, but decided to humor her anyway. Nothing else that would aid his escape was happening, so he'd might as well hear her out.

"Zim showed concern for me," he answered. "He loved the shadow version of myself, and he's looked out for me the entire time I've been here. That's a perfect example of Zim showing concern for others."

It sounded weird to defend Zim, especially after all the weirdness that had happened so far, but Dib couldn't help it. Zim had been protective of him, while all Leviathan had done was threaten him.

"He shows concern because it benefits him to do so," the dragon woman hissed. "He has to win you over to his side for him to win, surely he's told you that much? You're just an instrument."

"Oh...yeah." This argument was going further and further downhill on Dib's end. That sounded exactly like something Zim would do, befriend Dib to get the power that Zim needed to rule. "Okay...then what are you doing here? And what is this place if it's not part of Xanadu?"

"It's the Tower Hubris," Leviathan replied as if Dib's life didn't depend on this information. "Zim built Xanadu around this tower, so that he could protect it from his enemies. However, he underestimates me. This tower is in his fortress, yet its power will never belong to him."

"It's power?" Dib repeated in confusion. "But it's just a tower! Well it's a weird one, yeah, but ultimately it's nothing too great. Where's all the answers I'm supposed to find here? This place is supposed to have the answer I need to escape here!"

"The answer?" Leviathan responded. "It lies at the beginning. All of this stems from its beginning as all problems do. To find the answers, just trace the problem back to its source."

Dib stared blankly at the dragon woman before him as if she were crazy, though is mind worked desperately to find out what she meant. The source? The source of what? He thought some more about the absurdity of her reply and was about to complain about her vagueness, when it suddenly hit him. It hit him hard and quickly and was so painful to think of, he could almost feel his brain bleed while trying to grasp it.

"I have to return to the beginning," Dib whispered. "Oh God! That's it! The beginning! The answer was right in front of my face the whole time! All this time that I've been standing here telling myself that I have to wake up to stop Zim has just been feeding the problem! Zim! He's the problem!" Dib's face went completely white as the truth began to overwhelm him. "No...it hasn't been Zim that's the problem...it's been me. That's it, isn't it? I've been the problem all along? Zim didn't break my mind at all; I did. I broke my own mind."

"You did," she purred sadly. "You figured it out faster than I expected. That's encouraging."

Leviathan's whispered words did nothing to console Dib. He fell to his knees on the reflective floor. His fists balled up tightly and he banged them against the floor in a frightful anger.

"The moment Zim walked into the classroom for the first time, that's...that's when it happened," Dib whispered, his voice so faint it was barely audible. "Oh God, that's when it happened! I followed him home, and from that day, I became incensed. I was insane. Every moment, every thought, it was all dedicated to him. How to expose him, what he'd be planning on Saturday, even what was in his garbage! I lost...myself, my everything to him, didn't I?"

The dragon woman nodded sympathetically.

"You did," she confirmed. "And it almost worked out. At first, your mind adapted to think that this was another one of your hobbies, like stalking the bigfoot baby that lives down the street, but as time wore on, and Zim was still the subject of your every thought, this place grew darker and colder. You stopped talking to me, and then suddenly there was a version of Zim born into this world. Your thoughts were so intense, that you had to bring a version of him into your very mind! Soon, inhabitants of this place began to disappear as you began to forget about them. Your own family was reduced to shadows in your mind, and then finally to just tiny voices that you conveniently locked within this tower."

"This place...this used to be mine," Dib stated distantly, as if he were just waking up from a coma. In a way he was. Ever so slowly, he got up from the floor and approached one of the many mirrored walls. He ran his finger down it distantly, cringing as he saw Zim's shadowy reflection mirror his movements. "This used to be my reflection in here. When I looked at myself, I saw the person I was, not the person destined to save humanity, and not Zim's nemesis. I used to be Dib, just a person. I used to be a brother, a son, a student...now what am I?"

"That is up to you to decide," Leviathan replied kindly. "Only you can decide who you want to be. Life may give you the scenarios you must face, but only you can decide to be the person you want to be through those trials. You must choose who will be the ruler of this world, whether it be me, or Zim...or you."

Dib made no reply to this comment, instead choosing to stare intently at the mind crippling reflection he saw in the mirror before him.

"The shadow Dib. I overwhelmed him, didn't I?" he asked, though inside, he knew that he already knew the answer. "All of my mind was steeled on Zim and I didn't know how to handle it. The other me...he thought he had to love Zim to be thinking about him that much. So he loved him to try to make up for what I was doing to my mind. He tried to compensate, but it didn't work, did it? He knew that what he was feeling through me wasn't love, because it burned him. Those letters I keep finding, they always talk about the burning, or the darkness. His soul was on fire; my soul was on fire. Zim tore you and I apart, confusing the other me, making him think you were dark and evil...and then you really did become evil as a result. You killed him."

"It had to be done," Leviathan snapped, though she did it in a gentle manner. "It was compensation. You were crazy! If you could have only seen yourself! You were haunted, and tormented every second of the day. You moved to Xanadu with Zim and you were miserable. You weren't supposed to love Zim but it was the only way you knew how to deal with the situation. You gave him infinite power with your affections, though it pained you to do so. I put you out of your misery."

"And left no version of me within this world," Dib added, making the dragon nod beside him. "That's what started the war between you and Zim. With no me left here in this world, you had to fight for the attention of the conscious me...and Zim had all of my attention, making him the ruler of this place and you just a forgotten memory."

"Not entirely forgotten," the monster corrected. "I did manage to survive after you were destroyed. Zim's power in this world is far from infinite."

Dib looked at the creature before him skeptically, and folded his arms.

"And just who are you?" Dib demanded. "What are you and why are you even in my mind in the first place? One moment you're my closest ally, and then in the next you're threatening to destroy me! I know who Zim is and why he's here, but you're a mystery still."

"I'm something that you've lost," the dragon answered elusively. Dib shook his head at this and stood his ground firmly.

"Oh, no," he declared, his trademark Dib firmness beginning to return to him. "I've come too far and have too much at stake to accept that answer. Who are you really?"

The dragon made no reply to this, save a confident smirk. She turned her shapeless back to him and without warning, or even a hint of what was to come, she melted into the floor, then shimmered back to life again. But her new form wasn't that of a woman....

She turned around to reveal her transformation into his father. It was a perfect transformation, right down to the scythe of hair that Dib had inherited. Though it didn't last long. Within seconds, his father's form vanished and was replaced by Gretchen's from his class. Another blink of an eye and the purple haired girl was gone and was replaced by the host of Mysterious Mysteries. Another second passed and her form shifted once more, this time settling on...Gaz.

"Leave my sister out of this," Dib hissed, feeling oddly protective of his demonic sibling. "Attack me all you want, but leave her out of this!"

Gaz's image smiled, with was a sight Dib hadn't seen in years.

"You're protective of your sister," the Leviathan Gaz encouraged. "See? Once he's off your mind, you're free to think about me again. You claim to not know who I am, but you know that you know me deep down. I can assume any form you want...except for Zim. Everyone is a part of me, aside from that accursed alien, and I can assume their forms. Your gym teacher. Your guidance counselor. The kid working at McMeaties." Her form shifted with each name she spoke to reflect the image of the person she referred to, though she finished quickly by reverting back to Gaz. "How can the answer still elude you? It's _me_ , Dib. I'm the precious humanity you've sworn to save. I'm every child, every woman and man in the world you're trying to save, and you've forgotten that."

"What?" Dib gaped openly at this statement, unsure of how to grasp such an idea. "You're the image of humanity within my mind? How is that possible?" He stopped as a more important thought came to mind. "Hey! I could never forget about humanity! Humanity and protecting it are the only things I think about...other than Zim." He blushed at having to admit his obsession with the alien, the one that had landed him down in this place to begin with. "In fact, humanity is the only reason I care about stopping Zim at all. I'm always thinking about humans."

The dragon in Gaz's image scoffed a little at this.

"Oh Dib," she sighed. "The sad thing is that you believe that. You have it backwards. You don't think of Zim because of humanity and your duty to protect them, you think of humanity because Zim and his mission makes you. If Zim weren't trying to conquer the planet, you'd be perfectly happy to leave the clueless masses of people to their ignorance and be done with them. Why do you even want to save humanity? For the glory? To prove that you were right? It's been years since you trusted me, since you cared about what happened to me. Don't you see? Your obsession with that horrible creature not only fractured your thoughts and emotions, it also threw off your alliances."

"I would never team up with Zim," Dib retorted proudly. "The only time we've teamed up is when we were saving the Earth."

"I wasn't talking about you joining him," Leviathan replied, ignoring Dib's protests. "He's broken your connection with your people. You tell Zim that you're human and that humanity is yours to defend, but when you're actually among humans, you look down on them. You think you're better than your own people, but you risk your life endlessly to save them and that is a contradiction that would break even the strongest mind."

Dib scoffed at the idea, though he couldn't meet his false sister's eyes.

"I don't think I'm better than humanity," he denied. "That's ridiculous."

"Is it? Think about it carefully. You're jaded towards corporations, you lecture your skool mates endlessly on their ignorance, you stick up your nose at Valentine's meat...you almost condemned your class to a horrible moose dimension! The only reason you spared your classmates the trip to a moose dimension was to save yourself so that you could go back to playing the savior you love playing so much. Zim motivated your compassion, Zim was the reason behind your reasoning. Without Zim, and your constant devotion to him where would humanity fit into your mind? Face it Dib, you've taken humanity and your place within it and thrown it all away for the chance for a glimpse of life in the universe. When given the choice between the world you belong to and Zim, you chose Zim."

Dib's face burned at the truth. It felt far more like an accusation coming from the cocky dragon who seemed to be patronizing him. This scathing review of his character was getting to be a bit much for him. Okay, so he was obsessed with Zim, and yeah humanity more than often than not repulsed him, but did he really have to stand here and be lectured on it?

His fists clenched at his sides, and the dragon laughed at this...which sounded really odd coming from his sister's cold image.

"Never mind what's wrong with me!" he snapped. "Tell me how to fix it. Anyone can nag about someone else's problems, but that's not what I need. I need an answer!"

"The answer should be simple," the dragon teased. "It's what you should have done all along. Forget about Zim and embrace your humanity once more."

"Oh that's just sad, even for you."

Dib turned around and saw Zim, the cold, irritable gray Zim, leaning casually against the doorway leading to the stairwell Dib hated so much.

"Zim?"

Zim glared at the boy, though he was hardly angry enough to move from his perch at the doorway.

"I told you never to come here," he stated simply. "I could have found another way to get you home, but no, you had to disobey and run off here. You just had to do things your way, didn't you?"

"You can't tell me what to do," Dib replied defiantly. "This is my mind and my tower. You can't withhold something that I own."

Zim only stared at the boy, almost as if he were expecting that answer.

"Typical," he sighed. "This is truly your tower; your actions lately seem to embody it. You asked me what hubris meant not too long ago. Well, Dib, hubris is you. Defiance to the gods because of your excessive pride. You think everything should be done your way, you think you're Earth's sole guardian, you think you're commanded by destiny to be something great. Your pride is so overwhelming that it's amazing that you have the room to even think of anything else. Had the version of me you obsess over never arrived on Earth, undoubtedly you would still have your same delusions of greatness, just not to the same extent. If you thought about it, you and your excessive, obsessive pride is the very stuff the famous tragedies are made of. The over achieving hero who gloats and boasts about his superiority and then falls as the result of his own pride when the gods grow weary of his boasting...don't you see the similarities? You have an Achilles heel underneath that endless babbling about duty; you have a weakness, which is what landed you here."

"That's a description that better suits yourself," Dib shot snidely, furious over such an implication. "Zim's the one always babbling about his supposed superiority, not me."

"But your actions, your thoughts, your feelings...these all reveal the same thing: you are just as prideful as Zim," Leviathan insisted, reluctantly agreeing with her enemy. "Your pride is what makes you look down on humanity, it's what makes you think that you're more than an equal to Zim. Whenever you talk to Zim, it's more like a contest of egos than an actual conversation."

"It is not!" Dib protested weakly, shrinking from the wilting glares the two monsters were giving him. "It isn't! I don't have a problem with pride and even if I did it wouldn't be enough to make me forget about being human. Maybe I don't want to be human! Have you ever thought about that? Why would I want to be part of a such an ignorant, rude and destructive species? We could be the ones in space if only we weren't so consumed with ourselves and our images! Society's the one who forgot about me, and about truth." He looked at the two conflicting beings, Zim surrounded by shadows, and Leviathan by light. "So this is what it comes down to, isn't it? I have to choose. I have to choose between being a proud part of an ignorant self-serving species of morons who just lets Zim do what he wants, and rejecting every good redeemable part of humanity within me and just chasing Zim off into the stars? What kind of choice is that?"  
  
"It's the choice that will save your mind," Leviathan reminded the boy. Dib gave her the greatest look of protest imaginable.

"But-"

"But nothing, foul stink-creature," Zim ordered. "Choose! Or choose death as the result of your indecision. Soon you mind will collapse and no one will win in this struggle. Surely choosing me, ZIM! is preferable over death?"

"You belong with us, Dib," the dragon in his sister's body urged. "You belong with your people, not in the stars."

Dib looked from Zim to Leviathan doubtfully, trying his best to ignore the searing pain in his head. Having such sudden revelations and the irritating presence of both of his shadowy tormentors at the same time was really doing a number on Dib. He could have sworn that his brain was rotting away within his head, and he cringed to think about what this torment must be doing to his physical body. No matter how much these two creatures annoyed him, they were right. He had to choose and choose soon.

He looked at Zim again, who was already giggling to himself over presumably his superiority, then looked at the odd smiling version of his sister, who was too busy glaring at Zim to care about what Dib was doing. Both of them seemed so sure that Dib would choose them, but in reality, Dib was as confused as ever. Who did he want to choose? Did he have to choose just one of them? And if he did choose one of them, what was there to prevent him from regressing back and starting the war over again? Would choosing one really free him from this place anyway?

He looked back and forth at his options, but there was really only one thing for him to do. It was glaringly obvious, to him at least.

"There's no way that I can let Zim push me around and control my entire life," Dib declared suddenly, his words causing Leviathan to beam proudly. "I refuse to be subtlety controlled by Zim while there's a life waiting for me to experience...and yet I can't commit myself entirely to humanity either. They _are_ too blindly stupid to be enjoyable to be around all the time, and space is something that calls to me. I won't give up my dreams just to be like everyone else."

He looked smugly at the two shocked creatures before him, and grinned defiantly as he felt the tension within him begin to dissolve. A quick look at his hands confirmed what he already knew to be true: he was fading. His mind was made up, and whether he faded back to consciousness or into the cold comfort of death, he didn't know. Personally, he didn't really care either. As long as it was no where near this place.

"What do you think you're doing?" Zim demanded hotly. "You can't have things both ways! You have to choose one or the other!"

Dib threw the Irken imposter a defiant glare.

"And I have chosen," he replied. "I won't choose to be enslaved by either of you. I'll never surrender my free will! This is my mind and I choose me!"

"What? You'll be killed!" Leviathan protested, but Dib only grinned.

"Give me liberty or give me death," he answered, as his torso faded into nothingness, erasing all proof that he had ever been there. Invisibility cloaked his shoulders, working its way up to his neck. Dib gave a final nod of his head before he succumbed to invisibility. "It's been fun."

And with that, the self-proclaimed large headed ruler of his mind blinked out of sight, leaving two stunned shadows to sulk in the newly fused wasteland of his mind.

* * *


	10. Chapter 10

* * *

_May I return to the beginning  
The light is dimming, and the dream is too  
The world and I, we are still waiting  
Still hesitating  
Any dream will do_  
- _"Any Dream Will Do",_ Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat

* * *

"Hey. _Hey_!"

Darkness spiraled and swirled with light, mixing existence into a kaleidoscope of colours and sensations. Sight and sound, taste and smell all blurred together until one thing was completely unidentifiable from the next. Dib's head whirled lazily about, having lost all control over his body...that was, if he still had a living body to return to.

The thought of death was frightening to Dib, but he tried not to think too hard about it. If he died, then he died. There was no negotiating with death. And, as he was quickly learning to accept, the world would continue to exist without his presence.

Still...he didn't want to die. He still had plans left, still had a life to live. If it all ended here, and now, then Dib would have to accept it...though he wouldn't have to like it.

"Hey! I know you can hear me! Do not IGNORE me! HEY!"

"Ugh...."

Dib groaned miserably, one eye flicking open and shut weakly. Was...was this heaven? It didn't feel like it. It felt kind of like he had been hit by a truck, which was something he'd never really associated with eternal bliss before.

"You MISERABLE _human!_ Get up already! You lying, stinking, miserable-"

That voice...he'd know it anywhere. But which annoying extraterrestrial did it belong to? Was he still in his mind, weakened beyond belief, with that cursed shadow Zim, or...

"Z-Zim?" Dib managed to mumble, mashing his lips together oddly, trying to get used to using his body again. His head was killing him, still spinning around the room like he was on some serious medication. He was in pain...did that mean he was still alive? Hope flooded through him at this idea. Pain meant life right? Ghosts and shadows didn't feel pain!

Deciding to test this theory, he whipped a limp arm towards his throbbing head and waited for the result. Sure enough, all he felt was mind numbing pain. Glorious, wondrous, mind numbing pain! He was alive after all!

"Ha! Take that you stupid shadows! I'm alive! Yes! Good ol' alive not crazy Dib!"

In his excitement, Dib apparently wiggled too far in celebration and fell off the couch he had been placed on, landing roughly on the floor. His crash landing sent another wave of pain along is nerves, each sensation reminding him of his existence.

"Yes! Pain! I...I can feel again! Smell! Hear! All those other senses!"

From across the room, there was an irritated sigh and a smothered grumble.

"Idiot HUMAN! Of course you're alive!"

Dib's vision was returning ever so slowly to him, and as the world began to focus properly once again, he saw a sight he never thought he'd be glad to see in his entire life.

"Zim! You're here! You're...you!"

"Of course I'm me!" Zim snapped, his green skin reflecting against the harsh lighting in the skool nurse's office. "Who else would I be?"

"Nothing," Dib answered, trying to smother his grin. He really was back where he belonged! Here was Zim, green skin and all. Good old predictable Zim. The one he vowed never to take for granted again. "What are you doing?"

The Irken was strapped into metallic bonds that held him upright against the wall of the nurse's office, which looked oddly like a medieval torture device. Dib shook his head in disbelief. Only at his skool....

"Let me guess," he replied, giving Zim a sympathetic look. "The skool confined you here until I woke up, so that you absorbed the liability for whatever happened to me, right?"

"Uh, right." Zim answered, looking a little unnerved that Dib knew all of this. Dib just smiled.

"I had to stay with the Letter M when he fell in dodge ball," he explained knowingly. "That's quite a system we have."

"Uh...."

Zim was speechless at the change in his enemy. He was at a complete loss for words. Where was the tormenting, the teasing, the threats that he had come to expect from the big headed boy?

"Is Dib still alive? He'd better at least be comatose. I only have ten minutes left on these batteries and if I don't reach a save point, someone will PAY."

Both Dib and Zim looked at the doorway where a severely bitter looking sister stood, Game Slave in hand.

"Gaz?" Dib gasped. "You came to make sure I was okay?" His eyes went soft as they always did when someone showed him a rare kindness. It was this look that immensely annoyed both Zim and Gaz alike.

Gaz twitched a little at the idea of voluntarily searching for her brother and continued to glower.

"Of course not," she replied coldly. "Mr. Elliot promised to return my battery adapter if I picked up your homework and took you home. I get to go home early."

"Oh." Dib's face fell a little, but not before his eternal optimism kicked in. At least he was still alive!

He stared at Gaz compassionately, which in return, frightened his sister terribly. This was his sister, the same one he vowed to protect, the one he was supposed to look out for and cherish...the same one whose memory had given him hope in his darkest moments in that horrible Tower Hubris.

"What are you staring at?" she demanded icily. "You'd better not start one of your stupid speeches about stupid Zim."

From his place on the wall, Zim glowered at the scary girl.

"Hey! Mind your tongue, stink child...of stink!"

Gaz glowered right back at the alien, but to their surprise, Dib actually began laughing. Dib was laughing. Not pointing, not screaming, not pulling out his camera and "evidence", but laughing. It was something unheard of, so unheard of, Gaz backed away from her brother strangely.

"Dib? You're...acting stranger than usual. Do you have a fever or something?"

Dib stopped chuckling to grin at his sister.

"No, I feel fine! Better than fine! All this time, I just never realized how funny Zim is when he's mad."

"Eh?"

Zim looked both horrified and confused from his place on the wall at this revelation.

"Funny? You find the wrath of an Irken elite bent on ensuring your doom, FUNNY?"

Dib nodded, as his nose twitched a little. He gingerly sniffed at his trench coat, finding sticky Poop soda smelling globs embedded in the material. This only made him laugh harder.

"What'd you do, fish me out of a recycling bin?" he snickered, finding genuine amusement in the odor of his coat.

Zim nodded blankly, unable to grasp the change in his rival. It was incredible...either Dib had finally snapped, or he was more injured than Zim had originally thought. Was this some sort of trap?

Meanwhile, Gaz just stood in stunned silence, deciding whether or not she should even care about her brother's latest bout of insanity. It was odd...as strange as it was to see Dib so carefree and...happy, somehow it felt right. Her brother had been obsessed with the paranormal, of proving his sanity and chasing around Zim for too long. He had always been obsessed with the paranormal, but somewhere along the line, he had forgotten how to be her brother. And now, the way he stood there, beaming like an idiot, staring at her with kindness instead of a desperate plea to believe him, it...it was almost like having the old Dib back. It was like having her brother back.

Dib stopped staring at his little sister long enough to realize that his stomach was rumbling. He was hungry! Hunger meant he was alive! Hunger was temporarily his favorite feeling in the world.

He looked at Zim on the wall, wriggling insanely against his skool enforced bonds, and then looked at his sister. How had his mind slipped so far away from his true priorities? How had it found excitement in following around Zim 24/7? Just because he was from another planet? Suddenly that reason just seemed so weak. So what if he was from outer space? Once he got Tak's ship working again, he could fly out and meet all kinds of aliens who were far more interesting...and intelligent. He had all his life to explore the limits of space, and only a few short years to spend with his sister, here on Earth. Besides, with the way Zim's mission was going, Dib had a feeling that the annoying alien would be staying on Earth a lot longer than he had been expecting.

"Gaz?" Dib asked quietly, as not to incur the wrath of his sister. "I'm kind of hungry. Since Zim's going to be busy for a while, why don't I take the money I'd spend on photography costs and buy us lunch at Bloaties?"

"What? You will NOT! Release me you HUMAN! Release Zim!"

Gaz opened a suspicious eye slowly, hardly believing what she was hearing. Dib was asking _her_ to eat with him? He hardly showed up for their annual family dinners, and now he was asking her to spend time with him? This was...weird, but in a...a good way.

"Fine," she replied, still scandalized about what she was agreeing to. This would be....interesting. "But you're definitely paying." She paused for a moment. "And no talking about your stupid...hobbies."

Gaz waited for her brother to protest, but nothing came. Instead Dib only nodded.

"Of course," he replied, his openness forcing Gaz's other eye open in surprise.

Gaz turned around without saying a word and walked briskly into the hallway, having the distinct feeling that one day she would be describing this day to a psychologist.

Dib tried briefly to rub out some of the cola on his trench coat, and when none of it came out, he quit caring about it with a casual shrug. He turned to leave when he was stopped once more by Zim's cry of protest.

"Where do you think you're going?" he demanded irritably. "Release me at once!"

Dib paused for a moment, thoughts of opportunities weaving through his mind.

Zim was helpless, defenseless up there. Now was the chance to take off his disguise, to take a picture, to finally get the proof he needed to expose Zim for what he really was. Heck, he could even dissect Zim right there. He was in a medical place after all, there had to be a scalpel around somewhere. This was his chance!

He stood, standing there staring at Zim for a second, processing all these ideas. He had Zim right where he wanted him...right?

Shaking his head at his own stupidity, Dib chuckled slightly and turned his back on the angry Irken Invader.

"Sorry, Zim," he called as he ran out to meet up with his sister. "Maybe another time. Right now, I have a life to live!"

And before Zim could think of a semi-coherent reply to his nemesis, Dib had already disappeared out the doorway, smiling sincerely for the first time in months.

Free from the shadows that had once bound his mind. Free to go chase his rainbows.


End file.
